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. 



















The <^Art of 
Effective Speaking 


BY 

HALDOR B. GISLASON 

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 



D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 


BOSTON 

ATLANTA 


NEW YORK 


CHICAGO 

DALLAS 


SAN FRANCISCO 
LONDON 








/ 


Copyright, 1934, 

By Haldor B. Gislason v' 


No part of the material covered by this 
copyright may be reproduced in any form 
without written permission of the publisher. 

3 a 4 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


uiaR-2 WUl i 



What boots it thy pleasure? 

What profit thy parts? 

If one thing thou lackest, 

The art of all arts? 

The only credentials, 

Passport to success, 

Opens castle and parlor, — 

Address, man, address. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Eloquence is a republican art, — as conversation is an aristo¬ 
cratic one. — George Santayana 





PREFACE 


“Eloquence, like every other art,” says Emerson, “rests on 
laws the most exact and determinate.” Certainly much prog¬ 
ress has been made during the last twenty-five years in dis¬ 
covering what these laws are. Nevertheless, though much has 
been accomplished, much remains to be done. 

Whoever would acquire skill in speaking may attack the 
problem in three different ways: he may study theory; he 
may study models; he may practice. To ask which of these 
is the most important is a great deal like asking which is the 
most important leg of a three-legged stool. 

One of my aims in writing this text has been to give parallel 
treatment to all three. Many years of teaching experience have 
convinced me that the mere statement of a principle is of little 
value until it has been (i) thoroughly explained, (2) carefully 
illustrated, and (3) repeatedly exemplified in practice. Every 
principle here enunciated is concretely linked, up with the 
manner of its application by one or more of our great speakers. 
It is hoped that this abundance of illustrative material may 
prove welcome in the classroom, especially where library facil¬ 
ities are limited. 

Another aim has been to stress the importance of linking up 
speaking with the vital interests of the audience. Modern 
psychology has made it plain that we are essentially creatures 
of desire, motivated by a never-ending quest for the satisfaction 
of human wants, material, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic. The 
aim of all persuasive speaking, presumably, is to promote a 
fairer distribution of life’s satisfactions, to mould human envi¬ 
ronment closer to our heart’s desire. 

It may fairly be affirmed that fuller treatment than usual 


VI 


PREFACE 


has been given in this book to a number of phases of effective 
speech. The different forms of support, or the different kinds 
of speech materials, and their adaptation to the different types 
of speeches, have been given full and specific treatment. The 
significant part which illustrations play in speaking has been 
stressed, for it is largely through illustrations, embodying 
vivid and familiar experiences, that the new is compared to the 
old, and new behavior patterns are identified with the old ones. 
The speaking style has been given a somewhat elaborate treat¬ 
ment, which I believe its importance easily warrants. The 
same may be said of suggestion. 

An effort has been made to give the argumentative speech a 
balanced treatment, by which I mean that logical argument 
has been given only the place it merits. It is often an impor¬ 
tant form of support in this type of speech, but it is only one 
form of support out of many. To give it virtual monopoly of 
the field is to disregard the patent psychological fact that the 
real “controls” of human lives are lower than our heads. If, 
in 1863, when he pleaded the Northern cause in his five speeches 
in England, Henry Ward Beecher had followed, as a model, 
the traditional college argumentative forensic, one may imagine 
how disastrous would have been the consequences. Beecher’s 
addresses in England, and Lincoln’s political addresses in 
America, afford us as fine examples as we have of popular 
argumentative speeches. They are good models for study. 

A word in regard to the illustrative material used in the text. 
It has been selected in part from successful present-day speakers, 
and in part from speakers of the last generation, who exempli¬ 
fied the conversational type of speaking, and who were acknowl¬ 
edged masters in the art of communicating ideas to the ordi¬ 
nary run of audiences — the kind of audiences most persons 
have to deal with. If objection be made that some of these 
specimens show too much art for the ordinary person to follow, 
the answer is, it seems to me, that there is plenty of opportunity 
for everybody to read and hear the mediocre. We bathe in 


PREFACE 


vu 


an ocean of mediocrity every day. These models, in which 
American oratorical literature is rich beyond others, should 
serve to inspire students to their best efforts by keeping con¬ 
stantly before them the highest ideals. When we study other 
forms of art — painting and sculpture — we use the best 
models available. Why not in speaking? The student who 
saturates himself with good models along with his practice is 
well on the way to becoming a good speaker. 

No one can work in this subject without feeling a large 
measure of indebtedness to veterans in the field like James 
Winans, Arthur Edward Phillips, William Trufant Foster, 
Charles H. Woolbert, James Milton O’Neill, and others. I 
may with propriety make special mention of Frank M. Rarig, 
head of the Department of Speech, University of Minnesota, 
with whom for many years I threshed out most of the problems 
here dealt with, and whom I here absolve from all responsi¬ 
bility for whatever heresies may be found within these covers; 
to Franklin H. Knower of the same department, for carefully 
reading the manuscript and offering constructive suggestions; 
also, to Joseph M. Thomas, Assistant Dean, Senior College, 
University of Minnesota, for good counsel in preparing the 
manuscript. 


H. B. G. 


COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


To Jane Addams, for permission to reprint her address, “Washing¬ 
ton’s Birthday.” 

To D. Appleton-Century Company, for permission to quote from 
Contemporary Speeches, by James Milton O’Neill and Floyd K. Riley; 
Public Speaking, by James Winans; and Psychology of Suggestion, by 
Boris Sidis. 

To E. P. Dutton and Company, for permission to quote from 
Selected Papers on Philosophy (Everyman’s Library), by William 
James. 

To Ina Firkins, for permission to reprint the speech, “The Usurpa¬ 
tions of Society,” by Oscar W. Firkins. 

To Funk and Wagnalls Company, for permission to quote from 
William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold Speech,” as contained in 
Speeches of William Jennings Bryan. 

To Harper and Brothers, for permission to quote from Human 
Values, by DeWitt H. Parker; Eloquence, by Garrett P. Serviss; 
and Fundamentals of Speech, by Charles H. Woolbert; and for per¬ 
mission to reprint the speeches, “Social versus Biological Inherit¬ 
ance,” by Clifford Kirkpatrick, from Man and His World, and “Acres 
of Diamonds,” by Russell H. Con well. 

To Henry Holt and Company, for permission to quote from Talks 
to Teachers, by William James, and Psychology, by Robert S. Wood- 
worth. 

To Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, for permission to reprint 
“The Calf Path” from Whiffs from Wild Meadows and “The House 
by the Side of the Road” from Dreams in Homespun, by Sam Walter 
Foss; and “Little Boy Blue,” by Eugene Field. 

To the Macmillan Company, for permission to quote from Pur¬ 
posive Speaking, by Robert W. West. 

To Edwin Markham, for permission to reprint his poems, “Lincoln, 
the Man of the People,” and “The Man with the Hoe,” copyright 
by the author. 

To A. L. Miller, for permission to reprint the poem “Columbus,” 
by Joaquin Miller. 

To W. W. Norton and Company, for permission to quote from 
Influencing Human Behavior, by Harry Allen Overstreet. 

viii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Value oe Speech Training . i 

II. The Speech Situation. 8 

III. Choosing a Subject. 20 

IV. Finding and Recording Speech Materials . 31 

V. Speech Organization: The Outline .... 39 

VI. Preparation por Delivery. 56 

VII. Forms of Support . 79 

VIII. Forms oe Support: Illustrations. 96 

IX. Motivation: Want Appeal.118 

X. Motivation: Suggestion .137 

XI. The Speaking Style .162 

XII. Kinds of Speeches.191 

XIII. The Informative Speech.218 

XIV. The Impressive Speech.231 

XV. The Argumentative Speech.259 

XVI. The Entertainment Speech.292 

XVII. The Occasional Address.297 

XVIII. What Holds Attention.307 

XIX. Action: Gesture, Posture, Movement ... 327 

XX. Voice: Pronunciation, Enunciation .... 344 

Appendixes 

I. Suggestions for Criticism of Speeches . . 369 

II. Specimen Speeches.371 

III. Selections for Practice.445 

IV. Compilations of Speeches.488 

Index .489 


IX 




































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, 

■ 






















' 

































■ 










CHAPTER I 


THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING 

Nothing so truly distinguishes one person from another in 
point of culture as his manner of speaking. There is much 
truth in the statement that a man is known by the character 
of his speech. This is perfectly natural when we reflect that 
speech is our most important means of communication and the 
chief instrumentality by which we become known to each 
other. “Guard well thy tongue,” said Thomas Carlyle, “for 
out of it are the issues of life.” It is primarily through speech 
that we give expression to our personality — interpreting 
speech in the broad sense, not only of words, but also of the 
accompanying action, posture, gesture, and facial expression. 
John Ruskin has put this effectively in the following paragraph: 

A well educated gentleman may not know many languages, may 
not be able to speak any but his own, may have read very few 
books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; what¬ 
ever words he pronounces, he pronounces rightly. An ordinary 
clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at 
most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language 
to be known for an illiterate person. So also the accent or turn 
of expression of a single sentence will at once mark a man a scholar. 
And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated 
persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the 
parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree 
of inferior standing forever. 

The more fully we appreciate the extent to which speaking 
is a revelation of personality, the more readily will we give of 
our time and effort to attain in the largest possible measure 
the charm and power of cultivated speech. 


2 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Advantages of Speech Training, i. Speech training affords 
the very best kind of discipline in the art of thinking. There is 
no use in disguising the fact that there is no good speaking 
without careful thinking. The two processes go together and 
cannot be separated, or at any rate should not be. A student 
making a speech in class is compelled to see that his thinking 
cap is on straight. He knows that his performance will be 
under fire from his associates and from his teacher. If his facts 
are colored, reasoning processes wobbly, authorities warped, 
illustrations inapt, the searchlight of criticism will reveal these 
deficiencies. If he departs from his purpose and moves in a 
semicircle instead of in a straight line, as many of us have seen 
youthful Ciceros do, some one will probably point out how far 
the needle of his aim has deflected from the true meridian. 

The process of analysis that underlies every well-prepared 
speech, the search for materials in books, pamphlets, periodi¬ 
cals, interviews, and experience, the sifting of essentials from 
unessentials, the discovering of the main ideas on which the 
discussion hinges, the selection of speech materials in support 
of these propositions, and finally the preparation of this mate¬ 
rial for oral presentation to an audience — ah these afford op¬ 
portunity for sustained and discriminating thinking bounded 
only by the capacity of the individual. “The ability to think 
oneself into and through a subject, to be the master of a subject 
and not .its slave,” is worthy of a man’s best efforts. 

2. Speech training helps us to form correct habits of speech , 
and to overcome incorrect and slovenly habits. To speak dis¬ 
tinctly, so that every vowel and every consonant sound is 
properly enunciated; to speak audibly, so that every word and 
every syllable can be heard with the least possible effort; to 
speak correctly, so that every word is properly pronounced — 
this is no mean accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is not so 
easy of attainment as one would think. There is a tendency 
for most people to be careless and slovenly in their speech. 
Teachers of public speaking have the experience every day of 


THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING 


3 

being within thirty feet of a student speaking from the platform 
and still being unable to hear or understand one-half of what is 
being said. Voices fail to carry, and words sound as if they 
were being swallowed by the speaker. Vowel and consonant 
sounds are either slurred or incorrectly given. For society, we 
hear sassiety; for government, govurment; for beauty, beaudy; 
for duty, doody; for spirit, spearit; for trusts, truss. 

Faults like these and many others need to be overcome only 
once in our lives, and then they will stay corrected. It matters 
not whether it be in conversation, in business, or on the plat¬ 
form, a clear, distinct, confident, and cultivated speech is one 
of the greatest accomplishments any man can acquire. 

3. The skill in speaking which is acquired through speech 
training extends one’s sphere of influence. A man may have 
native ability of a high order, but as long as he uses it only in 
his calling, very few have occasion to observe it. “Extempo¬ 
raneous speaking,” said Lincoln, “should be practiced and cul¬ 
tivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able 
and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to 
bring him business if he cannot make a speech.” 

As long as a man hides his talents under a bushel, nobody 
will notice him much. But let him show his mettle in public, 
utter words of wise counsel, or blaze a trail of thought, and all 
the four winds of heaven will become willing messengers to 
spread the news of his advent into the community life. He will 
be singled out as “a man who can make a speech.” 

Such a man is always in demand. He is wanted at clubs, 
luncheons, banquets, conventions, festivals, Fourth of July cele¬ 
brations, political rallies, Old Settlers picnics, and all the rest 
of the community’s festal and commemorative occasions. It is 
doubtful whether there is any accomplishment so much in con¬ 
stant demand in the church, in the schools, in the public assem¬ 
blies, on the platform, and for occasions of all kinds as is the 
gift of effective speech. Those who cultivate this talent, there¬ 
fore, have a very good chance in the long run of being singled 


4 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


out for preference and distinction. It was precisely Lincoln’s 
power of speech which lifted him into fame and launched him 
on a career of noble and conspicuous statesmanship, in the 
course of which he was destined to sway the fortunes of the 
Republic. “It is undeniable that it was Webster’s power of 
speech that made his greatness,” affirms Gamaliel Bradford in 
a biographical sketch. Those who have heard Carrie Chapman 
Catt will understand how large a factor in her leadership, con¬ 
spicuous in forward-looking movements for forty years, has 
been her distinctive charm of speech. We have only to look 
about us to be impressed with the fact that even moderate 
skill in speaking is the open-sesame to public preferment. 

4. Speech training develops ability to speak in public , which 
has become almost a business necessity. Business these days is no 
longer the simple undertaking it used to be — or much of it, at 
least, is not. Business today is done on a large scale, with vast 
organizations involving personnels of thousands of people, and 
a hierarchy of officials from the president down to the shop fore¬ 
man, each one responsible for the efficiency of those under his 
management. Ability to manage and address large groups has 
become one of the requisites of business leadership. Moreover, 
our economic system is so ordered that the problem is no longer 
so much how to produce as how to get people to consume all 
the things we produce. This requires advertising and sales¬ 
manship of a high order, both grounded in the science and art 
of persuasion , which is the province of public speaking. For 
salesmen, at least, experience and skill in public address is of 
great value. It is not enough that they know principles; they 
must know how to apply them when face to face with prospective 
buyers whether singly or in groups. A salesman bulging with 
theories about salesmanship and without training in speaking 
is like a carpenter who knows all about tools but cannot drive 
a nail straight. 

Not only do we have large business units these days, but 
businesses large and small organize themselves into state and 


THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING 


5 

national associations. The local hardware man may become 
president of the state association; the local elevator man, state 
president of his group. At their annual conventions the mem¬ 
bers of these groups exchange ideas and talk about things of 
mutual interest: prices, economies, new methods, needed leg¬ 
islation to protect their interests, and other matters. Here are 
large opportunities for leadership. Men who have ideas and 
can make them known are the trail-blazers in business progress. 

5. Speech training is an aid to social adjustment. Speaking is 
a social performance and tends to develop those social qualities 
and personality traits that make us more desirable and efficient 
social beings. Among these may be mentioned tact, poise, 
ease, grace, self-confidence, and tolerance of other persons’ 
views. We are beginning to realize that it may be quite as 
important for us to learn to “get along with other people” as 
it is to master the details of our work. Social adjustments in 
a society as complex as ours are not easy to make. Nowhere 
do maladjustments of personality come to the surface as they 
do in a class in speaking. Here they may be dealt with intel¬ 
ligently and with sympathy. To cultivate satisfactory social 
relationships, to adjust oneself easily and fully to one’s social 
environment, is a vital thing. Speech or speech habits deter¬ 
mine largely how we succeed in doing this. 

6. Speech training makes for intelligent citizenship. The 
theory of our government is that all political power is lodged 
in the people, and that up from the people must spring “the 
life-giving waters of good government.” Movements for social 
amelioration cannot move faster than public sentiment. It 
may be said truthfully that the basis of all progress in a demo¬ 
cratic government is an enlightened public opinion. Daniel 
Webster once said, “We are living in an age when the accumu¬ 
lated common sense of the people outweighs the greatest states¬ 
man or the most influential individual.” If this was true one 
hundred years ago, how much more is it true now. Woodrow 
Wilson has put the same thought more picturesquely: 


6 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


And so with the making of public opinion; back in the country, 
on the farms, in the shops, in the hamlets, in the homes of cities, 
in the schoolhouses, where men get together and are true with one 
another, there come trickling down the streams which are to make the 
mighty force of the river, the river which is to drive all enterprises 
of human life as it sweeps on into the common sea of humanity. 1 

How important it is, then, that public opinion shall be truly 
enlightened! Too often our opinions are mere bundles of 
inherited or acquired prejudices. Many a man is a protectionist 
for no other reason than that his father was a Republican, and 
many a man is a free-trader for no better reason than that his 
grandfather was a Democrat. How few there are who come 
to conclusions on great public questions as a result of investi¬ 
gation and thought! We let our editors, preachers, and poli¬ 
ticians do our thinking for us. One great value of public 
discussion is that it leads to independent thinking. He who, 
through speaking, comes in contact with live questions, learns 
something of their vital relation to our well-being, and forms 
opinions on them as a result of study and reflection, lays the 
foundation of a broad and intelligent citizenship. John Stuart 
Mill in his Autobiography says: “I have always dated from 
these conversations [discussions in a debating society] my 
own inauguration as an original and independent thinker.” 

In Conclusion. We may be assured that it is well worth 
while for any one to improve his speech habits and to acquire 
some degree of skill in speaking. In point of clear thinking, 
cultivated speech, business leadership, personality development, 
intelligent citizenship, it is discipline of the first order. In no 
better way, moreover, can one make one’s influence felt than 
through public address. He who can stand before his fellows, 
give adequate expression to his thoughts and feelings, and so 
help to mould even in a small measure the opinions of his fellow 
men, is likely to be in the long run a power in his community, 
and perhaps in his state and nation. 

1 The New Freedom (1913), p. 103. 


THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING 


7 


EXERCISES 

1. Have you ever listened to a man speaking to a large audience, 
who was incapable of being heard or understood by more than 
a small group? If so, what was the difficulty? Could he have 
overcome it by early training? 

2. Name some prominent men in your community in politics, busi¬ 
ness, and professional fife. To what extent, do you think, has 
proficiency in speaking been a factor in their success? 

3. Introduce yourself to the class by telling them about your inter¬ 
ests, ambitions, likes and dislikes, why you are taking speech, 
your principal difficulties in speaking, and what you expect to 
do when you get out of college. Aim to show the same degree 
of frankness that you would like to see in others. This may be 
very valuable information for your teacher. (About three min¬ 
utes.) 

4. Commit to memory the stanzas by Emerson on page iii. Aim to 
give expression to them with conviction and fulness of meaning. 

5. Report orally or in writing on one of the speeches suggested for 
reading. Give your impressions of it as a speech. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Oratory,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: I). 1 

“The Value of an Ideal,” by William Jennings Bryan {Bryan, Vol. II). 

1 Many of the speeches assigned for reading are to be found in Modern 
Eloquence (Third Edition, revised in 1929), our best compilation of lectures 
arid addresses. For all such speeches, no reference is given except the 
volume number. Often these speeches may be found in earlier editions 
also. In case of all other speeches, reference is made to the volume in 
which each appears by inserting in italic type, after the name of the author 
of the speech, the name of the author of the volume, as shown here. The 
complete reference may be found in Appendix IV (page 488). 

In listing speeches for reading, reference is sometimes made to the same 
speech more than once. A good speech illustrates several if not all impor¬ 
tant principles of speech-making; e.g., good style and good selection of 
speech materials. The same speech may be read with profit several times. 


CHAPTER II 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more im¬ 
portant than any other one thing. Work, work, work is the secret of 
success. — Abraham Lincoln 

When you appear on the platform for the first time to address 
your fellows, you face a situation which to you seems new, 
novel. When you come to think about it, however, there are 
not many elements of newness to be found in the situation. 
You are accustomed to speaking to a group of your friends, on 
occasion at some length. You have stood up in school and 
given recitations many times. You may even have spoken 
before your class; so you are used to facing at least one audi¬ 
ence. If you have been accustomed to doing these things, 
then there is really nothing new in the situation when you 
make your first speech in a class in speaking, unless it be that 
the occasion is a trifle more formal, and that a little more care¬ 
ful preparation is expected of you. If you can meet the situa¬ 
tion by feeling that there is really nothing new about it except 
a little added responsibility, then that is the best way to ap¬ 
proach it. Behave on the platform just as you would anywhere 
else when you are on your dignity; and speak to your audience 
much as you would speak in ordinary conversation to a group 
of your friends. 

This sounds very simple, but of course it is not quite so 
simple as it sounds. If we are to be perfectly frank, we have 
to admit that most of us face the situation with some degree 
of uneasiness, with more or less uncertainty as to how we shall 
comport ourselves, and with a feeling of far heavier responsi¬ 
bility than we are accustomed to feel in ordinary conversation 

8 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


9 

or classroom recitations. The problem is to make the necessary- 
adjustments, to resolve the situation to our advantage and to 
master it. 

The Communicative Attitude. The first thing to note is that 
a speech situation always involves two parties: the person 
speaking, and the persons spoken to. This is obvious, of 
course, and would not need to be mentioned were it not for the 
fact that there is an ever-present tendency for the first party 
to forget all about the second party. We need always to 
remember that the chief and only purpose of speaking is to 
get certain responses from the audience, to influence their be¬ 
havior. Henry Ward Beecher defines oratory or persuasive 
speaking as “the art of influencing conduct with the truth sent 
home by all the resources of the living man.” The aim of a 
speaker is not merely to unload what is on his mind; it is to 
present it in such a way that it will stir up thoughts and feelings 
in the hearers. To do this he must have an alert consciousness 
of an observing and listening audience. Note that an audience 
not only listens to a speaker, but also observes or watches him. 
A speech appeals both to the ear and to the eye. Both voice 
and action carry meaning. 

Just what is meant by the communicative attitude may per¬ 
haps best be made clear by an illustration. I had occasion 
recently to be present at an international gathering of scien¬ 
tists — chemists, to be exact. An informal discussion was go¬ 
ing on, in the presence of an audience of about eight hundred 
people. The first speaker talked very slowly, and while he 
was speaking, he would refer to some notes he had, and most 
of the time look down at his chair or at his feet, once in a while 
at the ceiling. He gave one the impression of a man meditating 
aloud. If it ever occurred to him that eight hundred people 
were trying to hear him and understand him, he gave not the 
slightest evidence of it. Judging by the manner of his speaking, 
he seemed to be wholly oblivious of the fact that there were 
more than half a dozen or so persons right around him. Seated 


io THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

as I was near the door, I could not hear more than one word in 
three. It is safe to say that not half the audience heard him 
with any degree of comfort, and many not at all. In several 
places in the room, men were talking among themselves, show¬ 
ing that the speaker had completely lost their attention. His 
difficulty consisted in overlooking the fact that there were two 
parties in the speech situation, the speaker and the audience. 
He forgot about the audience, or at least failed almost com¬ 
pletely to take it into consideration. Speaking that does not 
reach the hearers is wasted breath, no matter how distinguished 
the speaker. How often it happens that prominent men speak 
to large audiences and cannot be heard or understood beyond 
the seventh row! 

After two or three others had spoken more or less indiffer¬ 
ently, there arose a man who no sooner had opened his mouth 
than the whole assemblage pricked up their ears, eagerly alert 
to catch every word that fell from his lips. This man had a 
good voice and knew how to use it, so that it carried easily to 
the whole assembly. He was, moreover, perfectly conscious of 
the fact that he had a large number of people listening to him, 
and was intent upon having them get what he was trying to 
convey. He surrendered himself completely to the task of deliv¬ 
ering his message. He did not look at the ceiling, nor at his 
feet, nor out of the windows, nor close his eyes, as the first man 
did. He looked his listeners in the face and talked to them, 
not at them; and he could be heard. In brief, he had the 
communicative attitude. 

This matter of speaking to an audience presents one of the 
greatest problems in speech training. I recently listened to a 
state declamation contest, as oftentimes before, in which were 
several young contestants, of more than ordinary ability, al¬ 
though not necessarily with much training. So far as the 
oratorial contestants were concerned, there were, among many 
merits, two besetting weaknesses. They had a lack of directness 
which resulted in a lack of modulation in the voice. Almost 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


ii 


without exception, these youthful aspirants spoke in the direc¬ 
tion of the audience, at them; but an individual in the audience 
could hardly feel that the message was meant for him. In fact, 
he wondered for whom it was really meant, and could not but 
conclude that it was really meant for nobody. A speaker 
would start out well and impressively; but before the ten 
minutes were up, the deadly monotony of voice and of emo¬ 
tional mood, together with the aimlessness in speaking and 
failure to sense a perceiving audience, detracted greatly from 
the effectiveness of the speech. 

The Conversational Mode. Perhaps the best way to develop 
the communicative attitude is to cultivate what we call the 
conversational mode of speaking; that is, the type of speaking 
exemplified in conversation. We mean, of course, conversation 
at its best, polite, orderly, dignified. Everybody knows in a 
general way what that means, but still it has some implications 
that need comment. 

Young students sometimes get the notion that speaking from 
the platform is a sort of “showing off” process, and that they 
must therefore appear in “grand style,” using sonorous tones 
and assuming a pompous attitude. No concept of platform 
speaking could be more disastrous than that. The frail bark of 
many a young man’s ambition has foundered on that rock. If 
ever humility serves a man well, it is when he faces an audience 
the first time, or the first few times. He is likely to feel humble 
anyway, before he gets very far; so he might as well start right. 

When we say that a man should speak in public much as he 
speaks in conversation, we should understand what that means 
and what it does not mean. We do not mean, of course, that 
he should carry to the platform the faults of ordinary conver¬ 
sation. Quite the contrary. We expect thought more care¬ 
fully organized, diction more dignified though equally simple, 
enunciation that is more distinct, and a somewhat more formal 
manner. 

What we refer to particularly, in speaking of the conversa- 


12 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


tional style, is the use of the voice , its modulations generally, 
with respect to vocal quality, variety in pitch, force, and rate 
of utterance. We mean that these should be much the same on 
the platform as in ordinary conversation. We mean that the 
voice, instead of being pitched in a high monotone with unvary¬ 
ing emphasis, as is so often true of speakers, should have the 
easy, informal swing of conversation, a variety of inflection and 
emphasis, which is absolutely necessary to express meaning and 
hold attention. 

We should understand clearly, of course, that there is much 
variety in the so-called conversational style of speaking. We 
do not in conversation speak exactly in the same way to one or 
two persons that we do to a group of ten or twelve; nor do we 
speak to ten or twelve as we speak to one hundred, even if they 
are all personal friends and the occasion the most informal one 
imaginable. If we should raise the group to five hundred, there 
would be a corresponding change in the character of the speak¬ 
ing, which any one may realize in imagination. Considerably 
more voice would be used, and the rate of speaking would prob¬ 
ably be slowed down, if the speaker wished to be easily heard 
and understood. Still, the conversational mode could be re¬ 
tained. It is not a question of how much voice we use, but 
rather of how we modulate the voice, or change it in point of 
quality, pitch, rate, emphasis. We may shout at the top of 
our voice, express the most violent emotions, as we occasionally 
do, and still be conversational. 

It is very much the same with platform speaking. We do 
not speak to five or ten as we do to one hundred; nor do we 
speak to one hundred as we do to five hundred or a thousand. 
It is possible, however, to speak to a thousand people, or even 
to several thousand, and be conversational. 

Bryan could speak to ten thousand people and use the con¬ 
versational mode. In fact, he never used any other. Clarence 
Darrow never speaks except in a conversational tone. One 
should adapt his voice to the audience and the hall, being care- 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


1 S 


.ful to be comfortably heard by all present. Do not confuse 
volume of voice with loudness. Volume refers to the amount of 
breath passing through the larynx; loudness measures the in¬ 
tensity of vocalization. One may use so much volume of voice 
in a whisper that five thousand people can hear. One may 
talk so loud that he cannot be understood thirty feet away. 
This may sound paradoxical, but it is true. The problem is 
to use the right amount of voice in the right way, remembering 
always that the requirements of cultivated conversation should 
be the guide. Wendell Phillips has been described as a “gentle¬ 
man conversing.” No better concept than that can be formed 
of platform speaking, and no finer type of platform speaking 
than that of Phillips is on record. 

A good way to discover how far a speaker has departed from 
the conversational mode is to stop him in his speech and ask 
him a question. He will very likely answer the question in a 
conversational tone. Of course, the answer will be given to an 
individual, and we do not speak to a single person exactly as 
we speak to a crowd. No man does, no matter how conver¬ 
sational he may be in his public address. But, roughly speak¬ 
ing, the contrast between the mode of answering the question 
and the mode of speaking will reveal the speaker’s departure 
from the conversational style. 

Naturalness. You will hear much about being “natural” in 
a course in speech training. All of us use the term more or less, 
and still it is one of rather vague and indefinite meaning. “Be 
natural,” in the sense of “Be unaffected,” is good advice, but 
do not mistake being natural for being effective. 

I recently observed two young women in a play. One spoke 
rapidly and indistinctly, blurting out her words, “clipping” 
some and mispronouncing others, having very little sense of 
emphasis, and even being slovenly in dress and personal appear¬ 
ance. The other was much the opposite; her utterance was 
very distinct, every word crisp as a newly minted coin, pro¬ 
nunciation studiously correct, voice firm and finely modulated, 


14 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


and personal appearance attractive. Both were natural; only 
it was natural for one to be effective, and for the other to be 
ineffective. The purpose of training is to make it natural for one 
to be effective. 

Every advance you make in perfecting your speech should 
register progress in personality development. The correct pro¬ 
nunciation of a word instead of an incorrect one; distinct 
enunciation instead of a slovenly one; the right tone color, 
adapted to the thought and feeling content of a sentence, in¬ 
stead of an improper one; a soft, well-modulated voice instead 
of a harsh, monotonous one; a graceful gesture or movement 
instead of an awkward one — all these mark unmistakably the 
growth of a more commanding personality, as well as progress 
in purposeful speaking. 

Nervousness. It has been said that no man ever makes a 
speech unless he has to. Strange as it may seem, the feeling 
of uneasiness that persons experience when they face an audi¬ 
ence is universal. Wendell Phillips, who made lecturing the 
principal business of his life for fifty years, used to say that he 
never walked out on a platform to face an audience without 
wishing that the platform would sink out of sight and he with 
it. Bryan, who more than any man of his generation lifted 
public speaking to the level of an art, affirmed that he usually 
had a “hollow” feeling in his stomach before addressing an 
audience. 

The problem of stage fright is one that almost every speaker 
has to face in some degree. There is no panacea for it. To 
control it is a part of the mastery of the speech situation. A 
few helpful suggestions may be given. 

i. Accept the situation and make the best of it. If you do not 
feel a certain amount of nervous tenseness when you begin to 
speak, the chances are that you will not do well. Persons with 
cold or phlegmatic temperaments do not make good speakers. 
Speaking in public requires much mental concentration and the 
expenditure of considerable nervous energy. When the new- 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


15 

ness of the speech situation wears away, the tenseness will 
gradually wear off, except in so far as it is needed to stimulate 
effective effort. Here is testknony from an experienced teacher: 
“ In a period extending over several years, the writer has known 
but one absolute failure among five or six hundred girls from 
embarrassment in speaking before a class.” 1 

2. Practice relaxation. The chief difficulty in stage fright is 
over tenseness of the muscles. We have so steeled ourselves to 
meet the situation that ease and naturalness have left us. 
Charles H. Woolbert, a searching student of the psychology of 
public address, offers this advice: 

Relax whatever muscles are not needed to accomplish the thing 
you are trying to do. Use enough energy in the legs to stand on, 
and no more; those muscles which by their opposition cause the 
trembling at the knees must be relaxed; the legs must be content 
to stand and not run. Reduce the extra muscular tension in the 
back and hips; so also the tension of the arms, hands, and especially 
of the neck and face. Study what is involved in Strength and Ease. 

The cure for those speakers whose fright is genuine and extreme 
and seemingly hopeless is in beginning to speak while limp all over, 
except for the vocal apparatus. Start freed of any possible excess 
of muscular tension. Then gradually add a stiff back, legs strong 
enough to hold the body, arms falling just in place, but nothing more. 
Do the same with the rest of the muscle systems — hands, neck, 
and face. Practice this sort of thing until you have achieved control 
over each of these systems and can throw each into or out of gear 
as you please. Such control is the essence of intellectuality, mental 
strength, self-possession. It is the opposite extreme from the baby’s 
general explosion; for he lives in a constant state of stage fright, 
unless when totally at ease — especially asleep. This is the case 
when he howls, for one of the surest manifestations of fright in 
some green speakers is a disposition to roar. The cure is far from 
easy, either for the baby or for the student; but except for psy¬ 
chopaths it is entirely possible always . 2 

1 Cornelia C. Ward: Oral Composition (1914), Preface. 

2 Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 1927), p. 86. 


i6 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


3. Get a grip on yourself. The cultivation of the will is sup¬ 
posed to be a vital part of education. To cultivate will power 
is to cultivate habits that are favorable to personal develop¬ 
ment and wholesome living. We do not know much about the 
possibilities in this field. A number of modern cults are founded 
in part, if not wholly, on this theory. Coueism is an example. 
The following quotation on this subject is from a recent maga¬ 
zine article by a scientist: 

Full scientific attention has not been given to the power of will 
in controlling all bodily functions. Very few have realized how great 
becomes the power of will intensified by practice and concentration. 
There can be no doubt of the predisposition which can be conferred 
on the nerve by internal power of will in facilitating or inhibiting 
the nervous impulse. 1 

Robert West, in his Purposive Speaking, has expressed this 
in plain English as follows: 

If you want A’s qualities some day, you must pretend to have 
them today. Yes, pretend. What does that word mean? It means 
tend in advance. What you pre tend to have today, you will tend 
to have tomorrow, and you will actually possess it the day after. 
Proper tensions, then, are caused by proper pretensions. 

Pretend to be confident; react as though you are, and you 
will be. 

There is good opportunity for practicing will power in prep¬ 
aration for platform work. The following cheerful advice from 
Frank Channing Haddock may be taken for what it is worth: 

Resolutely appropriate the occasion as your own and willfully use 
it as such. If the right word fails you, throw in another as nearly 
right as may be, or as meaningless as printers’ pie. If any one looks 
weary, ignore that person as an imbecile. Cling to the friendly 
face, though it be that of a fool. Remember, everybody desires 
that you should do well, for an audience suffers under a public collapse. 
Believe that fact. Keep faith in yourself. Storm the situation. 
Resolve to win on the spot. 

1 Sir J. C. Bose: Century Magazine, February, 1929, p. 385. 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


17 

4. Prepare your speech carefully. Careful preparation is one 
of the greatest safeguards against overtense nerves on the floor. 
To be well prepared is to be sure of oneself, and to be sure of 
oneself makes one feel at ease. If you have carefully arranged 
your materials and gone over them often enough to be thor¬ 
oughly familiar with the ground to be covered, the chances are 
that you will not have much trouble. The more completely 
you can surrender yourself to the subject in hand, the less likely 
you are to think about yourself, and the better you will get 
along. 

It may be a comfort to the neophyte to know that even men 
with reputation and experience are not immune from the virus 
of stage fright. A recent “release” from one of the two largest 
broadcasting chains in the country announces that a colorful 
reception room has been transformed into an English beamed- 
ceiling library studio “for the exclusive use of speakers who 
might be affected by micro fright. Heretofore, some of the 
timid radio speakers have paused before the majestic micro¬ 
phone. Often they suffered attacks of ‘ nerves.’ Realizing that 
surroundings had much to do with this, we have arranged the 
library studio as a means to end this idiosyncrasy.” 

Difficult Emotional Adjustments. There is no doubt that 
many students come into classes in speech to overcome nervous¬ 
ness and to adjust themselves properly to the speech situations. 
Most students can meet the adjustment without serious diffi¬ 
culty, and with practice become habituated to facing audiences 
without any more emotional disturbance than is proper for 
effective work. Occasionally cases arise that are stubborn and 
present real problems. It is for such that speech clinics have 
been established in many departments of speech, with a spe¬ 
cialist in charge, who is usually well grounded in psychology, 
especially in abnormal mental traits. If, after giving speaking 
a fair trial, you experience abnormal fear and find it difficult to 
develop confidence and self-assurance in facing an audience, 
you should confer with your instructor about it, frankly and 


i8 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


fully, and try to discover where the trouble is. It may date back 
to early childhood. The important thing is to get at the root of 
the difficulty and understand the cause of the trouble. Where 
the cause is understood, much may be done to correct the mal¬ 
adjustment. 

Much depends on the attitude with which you approach and 
do your work. Aim to make it cheerful and optimistic. Look 
for and dwell on the pleasant situations rather than the un¬ 
pleasant ones. A class in speech should have an atmosphere 
of informality where everybody should feel free to say what he 
wants to say, and to talk about his own and other students’ 
difficulties fully and freely. A class so conducted will carry 
with it some of the pleasantest memories of your school career, 
and you will look back upon it as the source of some of the 
best discipline you ever had. 

EXERCISES 

1. Discuss frankly with your teacher and other members of the 
class the merits and demerits of certain speakers fairly well 
known to the group. The aim should be to understand the good 
points and weak points of each, so that you may emulate their 
virtues and avoid their faults. Consider, among others, the 
following points: 

a. Do they use the conversational mode? 

b. Do they speak so that they can be heard? 

c. Do they rant? That is, do they use more voice and energy 
than is necessary or in good taste? 

d. Do they speak distinctly? Do they sound distinctly final 
sts, in such words as ghosts, mists, lists? 

e. Do they give you the impression that they are conversing with* 
you or talking at you? 

2. Report orally or in writing on one of the speeches suggested for 
reading, as to whether it exemplifies directness and informality 
of conversation. Characterize the style of the one you read as 
to diction, simplicity, and other qualities of good style. You 
should read several speeches if you can. 


THE SPEECH SITUATION 


19 


3. Relate some personal experience that has in it something of the 
thrilling or unusual. Aim to make it as direct and simply con¬ 
versational as possible. (About three minutes.) 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Masters of the Situation,” by James T. Fields {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 

“The New South,” by Henry W. Grady (Vol. II). 

“Public Opinion,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. I). 

“The Reign of the Common People,” by Henry Ward Beecher 
(Vol. XIII). 

“Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,” by Robert Ingersoll {Inger- 
soll , Vol. I). 

“Which Knew Not Joseph,” by Bruce Barton {Lindgren). 

References 

Charles Henry Woolbert: Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 
1927), pp. 86-88. 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements 
of Speech (1926), Chap. II. 

Arleigh Boyd Williamson: Speaking in Public (1929), Chap. II. 


CHAPTER III 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 

The cause of truth is advanced, in the long run, by allowing all to air 
their prejudices and advocate all their errors. — Wendell Phillips 

What shall I talk about? That is a question that must be 
answered by any one who undertakes to make a speech. Some¬ 
times, especially in early practice, it is almost as puzzling to 
choose a subject as it is to make the speech when the subject is 
once chosen. To find subjects suitable for different audiences 
and different occasions is certainly not easy, either in school or 
out of it. 

One way to answer the question is to say that choosing a 
subject is a part of the speech problem. You cannot make a 
speech without having something to talk about, and there is 
really no good reason why any one should help you choose 
your subject any more than there is a reason why any one should 
help you make your speech. It is all one project, and an indi¬ 
vidual one at that. Your instructor may give you some sug¬ 
gestions at first while you are getting started; but after all, 
the final choice must rest with you, for you alone know, or at 
least you know best, where your interests lie and in what field 
you are likely to do the most effective speaking. If you have 
to scratch your head to find a suitable subject, that is a part of 
the game. 

This problem of finding interesting and suitable subjects to 
talk about will remain with you in mature life, and in some 
measure as long as you continue to make speeches. Even a 
man of so wide experience as Senator Borah frankly confessed 
to an audience of university students that he was always puzzled 
to know what to talk about to an audience of college men and 


20 


21 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 

women. When, in future years, you will be asked to speak at 
the reunion of your class, or give a commencement address at 
your old school, or a Decoration Day address, no one will hand 
you a subject on a silver platter. When you ask, “What shall 
I speak about?” the reply will almost invariably be, “Oh, we 
are willing to leave that to you.” And they think they are 
doing you a favor by leaving the subject to you. Well, perhaps 
they are. Even if some one should suggest a subject to you, 
the chances are that you would not speak on it anyway unless 
it were one almost demanded by the occasion. As a rule, you 
would want to choose your own subject, for you alone know what 
subject would be best suited to you and to the time and place. 
The choice might give you some thought, but you would be the 
only one to make the choice. 

Finding Suitable Subjects. A student in class‘who evidently 
was having trouble in finding something to talk about suggested 
that the instructor should select subjects for all speeches. A 
moment’s reflection will reveal the futility of such an arrange¬ 
ment. How can any instructor know about the interests and 
prejudices of every member of the class and select the particular 
subjects for each member best suited to his knowledge and 
tastes? One student may be interested in sports, another in 
economic reforms, a third in agriculture, and a fourth in travel. 
Each should find topics for speeches in the field in which he is 
especially interested. If the instructor were to make an assign¬ 
ment of subjects, he would be bound to get most of them wrong, 
although he might once in a while hit upon the right one. Occa¬ 
sionally an instructor can guide a student into green pastures 
for speech subjects, but beyond that, he cannot reasonably be 
expected to go. 

Requisites of a Good Subject. For the benefit of the inex¬ 
perienced, a few suggestions for choosing subjects for speeches 
are ventured. 

i. Find subjects in your own experiences. It was Sir Philip 
Sidney who advised, “Look within thy heart and write.” The 


22 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


same sage counsel holds good for a speaker, 4 ‘Look within thy 
heart and speak.” For within you, in the storehouse of your 
memory, are countless experiences and reactions to your en¬ 
vironment, accumulated throughout the years. We live in a 
complex society, presenting numberless opportunities for new 
experiences and activities of all kinds. To this many-sided 
environment, you are at all hours of the day constantly reacting 
in one way or another. Some of your reactions are favorable, 
some unfavorable. Some things about your environment you 
like; others you do not like. You may live in the city and feel 
the lure of the simple life in the country. You may be a con¬ 
servative and fear that the radicals are planning to overthrow 
our social order; or you may be a radical and think that the 
conservatives are planning another world war. Here is your 
opportunity to give your views on all the burning questions of 
the day. You may not be right, but you have a right to your 
opinions, even the right to be wrong. The utmost freedom of 
expression should prevail in a class in speaking. A good slogan 
for such a class is the sentiment uttered by Wendell Phillips 
and given at the head of this chapter. 

For your first speeches, at any rate, it will be well to take 
subjects that are at hand and of which you have some first¬ 
hand knowledge. Your college environment is full of problems, 
with some of which you have doubtless come in contact. You 
may not think that campus politics move on as high a plane as 
They should. Give your views and help to set such matters 
right. There are many questions touching college life on which 
you should have intelligent opinions. Do you approve of the 
honor system in examinations? Do you think a student who 
observes cheating in examinations should report it? Is foot¬ 
ball occupying too much attention of undergraduates to the 
detriment of scholarship? Should the faculty censor student 
publications? Should your Alma Mater foster debating or dis¬ 
cussion clubs on the order of the Oxford Union, England? Do 
too many classes and recitations hinder the earnest student’s 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 23 

pursuit of knowledge? Is a liberal arts education worth while 
for a man bent on a business career? These and countless other 
questions are meat for speeches. Observe what subjects you 
get into disputes about with your friends and associates. Some 
of them may be serious enough to warrant a speech. Good 
speeches are often made on simple subjects. 

What are you interested in? That is a good question to ask 
yourself. The different studies that you pursue in college should 
furnish some interesting subjects for speeches. You have prob¬ 
ably selected, or else are considering the selection of, your major 
and minor groups of study. That is one clue to where your 
interests lie. We are apt to overlook the opportunities that 
are right before us, and seek for them in the far distance. 

Take for instance the subject of psychology. That is one of 
the most popular of all the sciences, and one that has a bearing 
on almost every aspect of life. In its approach to the study of 
human behavior, it has almost completely changed its point of 
view in the last fifteen or twenty years. It is becoming increas¬ 
ingly objective — a science of experimentation, tests, measure¬ 
ments, and of technical terminology. What, in plain English, is 
the meaning of such terms as mental conflict , complex , compen¬ 
sation, rationalization? What have physical characteristics to 
do with intelligence? What has become of the theory of the 
localization of brain functions? What have intelligence tests 
added to our concept of mental abilities? What is the ability 
of adults to learn? How does it compare with that of college 
students? Is there compensation in psychological traits? 
These are merely suggestions of the many interesting topics 
which a study of psychology presents to the speaker. To ex¬ 
plain these in simple and concrete language to an audience not 
familiar with them is good practice in speaking. 

Take anthropology as another example. It is revealing many 
interesting facts about the early life of the human race. Exca¬ 
vations are being made in all quarters of the globe, yielding 
interesting relics and information about how other peoples and 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


24 

races lived and moved and had their being thousands of years 
ago. To most persons, Neanderthal Man and Pithecanthropus 
Erectus are only names. The lives and customs of primitive 
man are of absorbing interest and throw much light on the arts, 
institutions, and general behavior of the more advanced races 
today. I recently read a volume in this field which to me con¬ 
tained some startling statements. One was to the effect that 
our study of races does not enable us to say that the so-called 
savage races have a lower mentality than the civilized ones. 
The differences in culture are to be accounted for largely by 
the means they have to work with. An African “savage’’ 
recently made a lecture tour of America and turned out to be 
a capital speaker! Here are opportunities for a series of inter¬ 
esting speeches. 

So with many of the other natural and social sciences. Soci¬ 
ology, history, economics (always a fertile field for speakers), 
political science, business administration, agriculture, engi¬ 
neering, astronomy — all furnish a variety of interesting sub¬ 
jects for speeches, provided one has done special work in one of 
these fields. It is assumed that a speaker who undertakes to 
talk about these subjects knows something about them, and 
has enough interest in them to give to his speech materials the 
imprint of his personality. No one can make an interesting 
speech until he has assimilated and made his own the ideas which 
he wishes to present. 

2. Choose subjects that you know something about. This is 
very much in line with what has preceded, and means that 
you, as a speaker, should have a degree of knowledge larger 
than that possessed by your audience. It is a great advantage 
in speaking — in fact an essential — to have a knowledge of 
your subject far beyond that of your hearers. It gives a cer¬ 
tain amount of prestige and authority to your statements. We 
are all willing to give a hearing to the man who can impart new 
information on an old subject, or push forward the boundaries 
of knowledge on any subject of interest. 


25 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 

The world surrenders to the man who knows. “In any 
knot of men,” says Emerson, “conversing on any subject, the 
person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company 
if he wishes it, and lead the conversation — no matter what 
genius or distinction other men there present may have; and 
in public assembly, him who has the facts and can and will 
state them, people will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, 
though he is hoarse and ungraceful, though he stutters and 
screams.” 1 

It is not intended, of course, and cannot be expected, that a 
person will make himself a specialist in every subject that he 
undertakes to talk about. But a student of speech-making 
might as well understand early in his career that making 
speeches is serious business, and that if he wishes to excel, it 
will mean much hard work and application. One of the mis¬ 
takes students often make is to wait until the last minute to 
choose their subjects, and then wonder why they do not get on 
better. A subject for even a ten-minute speech should be 
chosen at least two weeks before the speech is to be made. A 
speech grows. It does not just happen. Ideas must have time 
to germinate. If you have eight hours to put on a speech, it is 
much better to spend, say, two hours at a time, twice a week, 
for two weeks, than cram for it the last day or so. That gives 
you an opportunity to think about the subject when you are 
walking to your classes, or riding on a street car. It gives you 
also an opportunity to talk about it with your friends. In 
this way, you will revolve it in your mind again and again, 
look at it from every angle, change your mind perhaps several 
times, and finally evolve something worth presenting. 

3. Do not make the aim of your speech too broad. Many 
speeches are spoiled by covering too much ground. A five- 
minute speech on disarmament or the League of Nations is fore¬ 
doomed to failure. It is impossible in a few minutes to give 
adequate support to any vital propositions on questions of such 
1 Lecture on Eloquence. 


26 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


magnitude. If you must take a big subject, be sure to limit 
it in some way, and deal with one or two aspects of it. Suppose 
you want to speak on the American protective tariff policy for 
five or ten minutes. You will not get very far in an argument 
for or against it. Consider the following propositions: Is it 
needed to protect American industry? To what extent does our 
tariff policy protect American labor? What is the probable cost 
of it to the consumer? To what extent are such tariffs the cause 
of international conflicts? Any one of these propositions is well 
adapted to an hour’s speech. What is the effect of our protec¬ 
tive tariff policy on the agriculture of the Northwest? That is 
somewhat limited, but still a very broad proposition. What 
protection does the American tariff afford the American wheat 
grower? That is narrowing the subject down to the limits of a 
possible good ten- or fifteen-minute speech. 

So with every broad subject. Aim to limit it, and find a 
• purpose sentence that can be adequately supported in the time 
you have at your disposal. To spread your efforts over too 
much ground is fatal. The River Platte in Nebraska has been 
described as being a mile wide, a foot deep, and five hundred 
miles long. If that is an accurate description of it, we may 
know that it serves no good purpose, and is mostly a nuisance. 
Confine it within a channel a hundred or two hundred feet 
wide, and it becomes a mighty stream capable of developing 
great power. It is much the same way with a speech. Spread 
it over broad ground, and it accomplishes nothing. It has neither 
depth nor momentum. Confine it within narrow limits, get 
cumulative support for your propositions, and you may have a 
dynamic message that will move an audience to resolute action. 

4. A good subject 11 grips” A subject for a speech is well 
chosen if it grips both speaker and audience. To do well, a 
speaker must be dominated by his purpose. Emerson defines 
an orator as a man “drunk with an idea.” The speaker should 
feel that he would really like to say something on the subject, 
and when he gets through, the audience should feel that some- 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 27 

thing has been said that needed to be said. Avoid making a 
speech that is merely an “elaboration of the obvious.” If you 
try to explain something, let it be something that needs to be 
explained. If you want to convince your audience of something, 
be sure that they are not convinced before you begin. If you 
want to make them feel deeply on a subject, let it be some 
subject to which they are indifferent and with which they are 
not properly impressed. Experience, training, practice will 
gradually lead you to subjects that grip, and away from those 
that do not. 

A subject grips an audience if it deals concretely with fun¬ 
damental wants and desires. (See Chapter IX.) It grips a 
speaker when it impels him to put forth his best efforts in the 
preparation and the presentation of his speech. 

The Value of Your Own Experiences. Learn to value properly 
your own experiences, for you will find in the long run that 
your experiences will suggest the best subjects to you, and will 
also prove to be among the very best speech materials you can 
get. It takes practice to realize this fully, and to select those 
experiences that have the greatest interest values. Lincoln 
helped a pig out of a tight place in a fence, and the world has 
been talking about it ever since. You may have done something 
just as startling, only the world does not know about it. The 
problem is to learn to value and interpret experiences properly. 
Charles H. Woolbert, in his Fundamentals of Speech , speaks to 
the point in the following: 

Never confess that you cannot think of anything to talk about; 
it is a confession either of fear or of poverty of life. That boys and 
girls can arrive at upper-school and college age and not have count¬ 
less good things to discuss is inconceivable. You have all done 
enough and been through enough to have more than enough to say 
that will be interesting to others — providing you have learned the 
art of saying it well. Likely enough the thing you talk about most 
interestingly is the very thing that looks so commonplace to you 
that you cannot imagine anybody’s being interested in it. Yet if it 



28 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


is genuinely yourself and out of your own experience, and if it is 
told well, you will never have to send out a town crier to get a hearing. 
Half the time the stuff people like best is the very stuff the speaker 
thinks is too simple to be mentioned. No more interesting matter 
for writing or speech exists than commonplace experiences well told. 1 

Learn to have opinions of your own, but do not have many 
convictions unless you are sure of your ground. Convictions 
without proper understanding and evidential support are dan¬ 
gerous. Large portions of the earth have been drenched in 
blood in support of convictions that have proved unsound. 
Several good speeches could be made on the theme, The Tragedy 
of Uninformed Opinion. 

In Conclusion. Choose, then, a subject that comes well within 
your own personal experiences; that you know something about, 
or are willing to gather authoritative information for; that is 
not too broad, but will enable you to give it adequate support 
in the time at your disposal; that will grip your audience and 
yourself as well, and so impel you to put forth your very best 
efforts. Remember Emerson’s definition of a good speaker — 
one who is drunk with an idea. Do not forget that it is not 
enough to have a good subject and good speech materials. You 
yourself must react to those materials, make them your own, 
assimilate them, and not merely serve as a conduit for passing 
them on. Something like a chemical reaction is needed between 
your speech materials and your own personality. Your own 
individuality must at all times dominate the situation and make 
its impress on all your utterances. 

When class work in speaking gets under way, you will find 
that the speeches given by members of your class will suggest 
to you all kinds of subjects. Some of the things said will arouse 
opposition. You will not agree with them and will want to 
make reply. You will find, also, that in working up your own 
speeches, you will come upon trains of thought that you may 
want to follow up and develop. In this way, a new world of 
1 Revised Edition, 1927, p. 305. 


2 9 


CHOOSING A SUBJECT 

opportunities for speaking will open up before you, and this 
will be worth more to you than all the subjects that can be 
given to you. In the meantime, refer to Chapter XII, “Kinds 
of Speeches,” for suggested subjects. 

EXERCISES 

1. Prepare a three- to five-minute speech for class, choosing a subject 
on which you have some settled convictions. Aim to express 
these convictions candidly. In preparing your speech, try to 
show that it is to the advantage of your audience to think as 
you do on the subject. 

2. Hand in five subjects suitable for class speeches. Justify your 
choice of subjects on the basis of criteria given in this chapter. 

3. Criticize the following speeches from the point of view of choice 
of message: 

“The Gettysburg Address,” by Abraham Lincoln. 

“Progress of the American Negro,” by Booker T. Washington. 
“Liberty under the Law,” by George W. Curtis. 

“George Washington,” by Jane Addams. 

4. Make a list of three subjects that you have recently heard dis¬ 
cussed, either in church or elsewhere, and that have appealed to 
you as being good. Why did they appeal to you? 

5. What speeches have you read that exemplify a wise choice of 
message? 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“The Battle of Life,” by Mary Livermore {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 
“The Reign of the Common People,” by Henry Ward Beecher 
(Vol. XIII). 

“Liberty under the Law,” by George W. Curtis (Vol. I). 

“Progress of the American Negro,” by Booker T. Washington 
(Vol. VIII). 

“The Gettysburg Address,” by Abraham Lincoln (Vol. XI). 

For a variety of short speeches on many themes, see James Milton 
O’Neill: Modern Short Speeches. 



30 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


References 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chap. XIV. 
William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XVI. 

Arleigh Boyd Williamson: Speaking in Public (1929), Chap. IX. 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “Hints on Speech Making,” Modern 
Eloquence (Third Edition, revised in 1929), Vol. II, pp. xv-xxii. 


CHAPTER IV 


FINDING AND RECORDING SPEECH 
MATERIALS 

When you have chosen a topic and formulated a proposition 
to express your purpose, broad enough to include all you want 
to say on the subject, the next step is to find something to say. 
If you are talking about a subject that will enable you to draw 
heavily on your personal experiences — as, for instance, a travel 
talk or an account of some unusual and thrilling adventure — 
all you may have to do will be to draw on your memory, and 
simply tell about things you have actually seen and heard. If 
the subject is more involved, and requires careful analysis and 
the use of facts, figures, and authorities, you may have to look 
for all available sources of material, including interviews, cur¬ 
rent periodicals, books, and reports of different kinds. 

Sources of Speech Materials. Let us look at a few of the 
available sources in their order. 

i. Your Own Knowledge of the Subject. The first and most 
important source of information on many subjects will be your 
own mind and memory. If, as has been suggested, you choose 
subjects at first that come largely within your own observation 
and experience, you may not have to go beyond this primary 
source. If you are going to talk about a fishing trip, a day in 
the woods, or travel abroad, you will not need to consult any 
books or magazines. All you will need to do will be to set down 
in orderly fashion all the important points you can think of, 
and then proceed with whatever other preparation you wish 
to make for your speech. 

Sometimes you will talk on subjects that do not actually 
come within the range of your own observation, but may give 

31 


.32 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


you an opportunity to observe things directly. If, for example, 
you should decide to explain a telephone exchange in a big 
city, through which one may get any one of half a million 
families in a few minutes, you could easily observe an exchange 
in action and so get your information direct. There is nothing 
like first-hand information whenever you can get it. If you 
want to explain how highways are built these days, the best 
way to get information is to watch a road crew at work. 

Much of the time, in making speeches, you will find that you 
can only in part draw on your own knowledge and observation, 
and must in large part depend on information from other 
sources. You may, then, properly begin by taking an inventory 
of your own mind on the subject. Set down in plain words 
what you know, arranging your ideas in orderly fashion, and 
using cards as suggested later in this chapter. You will find 
this a capital exercise in thinking. It will help you to draw a 
line between what you know and what you do not know, and 
at the same time suggest to you the kind of information and 
evidential support that you will need to get from other sources. 

2. Conversation and Interviews. Talk over your subject with 
your friends and acquaintances. Seek out especially those 
who know something about it. If you are speaking on mail¬ 
order houses, the farmers who buy from such houses and the 
merchants who are their competitors are the persons who 
should have interesting information to give you. If the subject 
is a proper diet for building up healthy teeth, your dentist 
should have something to say on that question. If your subject 
is vitamins, then a dietitian or a doctor might supply useful 
information. 

When you get interesting information on any subject, it is 
good practice to impart it to members of your family or friends. 
You can do so without pretending to make a speech, and their 
reaction will give you some idea of the interest value of your 
materials. You might consider to advantage — and a very 
great one — forming the habit of imparting to your family or 


FINDING AND RECORDING MATERIALS 


33 

associates every day some interesting bit of experience that you 
have had, either in school or out of school. Let the telling of it 
be in the course of conversation and without any particular 
effort on your part. If you do this consistently, you may 
wake up some day to find yourself an interesting conversa¬ 
tionalist. That is worth while in itself, and of course is a very 
great aid to speaking. 

3. Current Magazines. All students of speaking should be 
informed on current events. Some of this information you may 
get from newspapers, but most of it you will get from current 
magazines. Your library will no doubt have many of them, 
and perhaps all the leading ones. You will find much valuable 
information on current topics in magazines like the following: 


Monthly Magazines 


Forum 
Harper’s 
Atlantic Monthly 
Scribner’s 
American Mercury 


New Outlook 
World’s Work 
North American Review 
Current History 
Review of Reviews 


New Statesman (English) 


Weekly Periodicals 

Literary Digest Dearborn Independent 

Journals oe Liberal Opinion 

New Republic World Tomorrow 

Nation Christian Century 

These and others will be fruitful sources of information on a 
large number of current questions. 

4. Readers’ Guide and Poole’s Index. The Readers’ Guide 
is an index of the leading articles in the leading magazines 
from 1900 to the present, arranged alphabetically by subjects 
and authors. Poole’s Index dates still farther back. If you 
have access to good libraries, you will find these your greatest 
source of information. 


34 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


5. Other Printed Materials. There are many other sources, 
like the Congressional Record (on current economic and political 
subjects), the United States Daily, trade journals, and reports 
of commissions, which your librarian can tell you about. You 
will gradually learn to avail yourself of all sources within your 
reach. 

On many subjects you will of course have to do a large 
amount of reading. Aim to distribute your reading so as to 
get as broad a view as possible of the subject under discussion. 
On public questions, get all points of view — conservative, 
liberal, radical. Assume that all persons have reasons for the 
opinions they hold, and try to understand them. Cultivate 
tolerance of opinion. Broad reading is the best way. 

6. Observation. Be a good observer. Learn to see things 
clearly and in detail. One difference between Darwin and the 
ordinary man was that Darwin could look at an object and see 
in it things that other people could not see. Henry Ward 
Beecher, the famed preacher of Plymouth Church, was a great 
observer. Often he would spend hours in Tiffany’s jewelry 
store in New York City, observing beautiful objects worked in 
silver and gold and other metals. Sometimes he would take 
extended walks along the piers of New York City, watching 
the freighters and ocean liners take on and empty their cargoes. 
He was a great lover of nature, and to him nature was full of 
beauty and object lessons. So when Sundays came around, 
we find his sermons full of illustrations based on these observa¬ 
tions and experiences which everybody was familiar with and 
all could understand. 

Wendell Phillips took up a quarter one day and noticed that 
the figure on it looks backward. He used this fact in an impres¬ 
sive simile in one of the most powerful speeches he ever made, 
“The Scholar in a Republic.” “Sit not like the figure on our 
silver coin looking ever backward,” he said to his audience of 
Harvard graduates. Phillips used to spend the summers in the 
country. One day he noticed that the geese bent their necks 


FINDING AND RECORDING MATERIALS 


35 

going through a barn door, even though they never came within 
several feet of the top of the door. He got an effective illustra¬ 
tion from this for a speech. 

Almost any subject may be illuminated and enlivened with 
personal experiences and illustrations based on them. You will 
probably be surprised to observe how extensively this form of 
support is used by our very best speakers. The speeches of 
men like Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Inger- 
soll, Thomas Starr King, Russell H. Conwell, John B. Gough, 
Henry W. Grady, and William Jennings Bryan abound in such 
references. You will find that speeches having to do with home, 
school, church, community, sports, vacations, outings, readily 
lend themselves to such forms of support. 

Recording Materials. It is important to have a very definite 
system of taking notes as you proceed with the preparation of 
your speech. Especially is that true of the longer speeches and 
debates where notes are often voluminous, bearing perhaps on 
scores of points. These notes should be arranged in such a way 
as to make it easy to get at them and find what is wanted. 

1. The use of notebooks is not a good system , for several reasons. 
First, when the notes become numerous, it is very difficult to 
find the particular piece of material one may want, and that 
difficulty grows as the notes pile up. In the second place, it 
will be found that even with the greatest of care as to what is 
taken down, many of the notes will prove useless for the speech 
or debate in its final form and should be discarded as soon as 
that fact is discovered. It is not easy to do this if notes are 
taken in a notebook. Lastly, in giving the speech or debate 
from the platform, notebooks are clumsy for reference purposes. 
To use notebooks first and then copy from them the main 
points needed for the occasion is a waste of time. 

2. Use cards. There is a much better way of note-taking, 
and that is the use of cards from the beginning. Experience 
has proved this to be the best and the only good method. Indi¬ 
cate at the top of the card what point the material bears on 


36 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

and, in a general way, the source of it. Then keep together the 
cards that bear on the same point. Thus you are able at any 
time with the least possible effort to get a survey of all the 
material you have on any one phase of your speech. If the 
materials on some cards prove useless, throw those cards out. 
Then, when you need to refer to facts, authorities, or other 
forms of support, they are ready for you in the best possible 
form. Ruled cards, three by five inches, are most serviceable. 

A few suggestions for taking notes on these cards may be 
helpful. 

1. On any particular card, put materials bearing only on one point. 
There is no harm in using both sides of the card, provided mate¬ 
rials all bear on the same point. 

2. If you mean to quote a writer or speaker exactly, put the words 
in quotation marks to indicate that they are those of another. 
Indicate omissions as follows: . . . 

3. At the top of the card on the left, indicate the main heading or 
subheading on which the material bears; on the right, the author 
quoted. 

4. At the bottom of the card, make a definite reference to the source: 
name of book, magazine, report, etc., with number of volume, 
year of publication, and page; e.g., Immigration Commission 
Report, Vol. II, 1906, p. 422. 

If you follow these directions consistently, you can, by look¬ 
ing at a card, see at a glance what point it bears on. You can 
sort the cards so as to bring together those that cover the 
same point in your speech. Then, in the final speech or debate, 
you can use these cards so far as you need to use them, and 
so far as it is wise to do so. Be careful to make references 
definite, so that you can look them up when necessary. 

Using Cards on the Platform. It is very easy to abuse the 
practice of using cards while giving a speech or a debate. On 
such occasions cards are crutches, and should be used sparingly. 
When you go to hear a man speak, you do not like to see him 
keep his nose in his notes. No more does an audience like to 


FINDING AND RECORDING MATERIALS 


37 


see you do it. Cards have their places, however, especially as 
aids to the inexperienced speaker. It is perfectly proper to 
read exact quotations from them when you want to quote an 
authority. It is also proper to refer to them occasionally for 
sequence of points or arguments; but do not forget that the 
less you depend on cards to aid the memory the better. The ideal 
to be reached is to be able to stand before an audience and 
deliver your message without any notes except for reading of 
quotations. 

In Conclusion. Cultivate the habit of drawing on your own 
personal experiences whenever possible for speech-making pur¬ 
poses. If well-selected and suitable for the accomplishment of 
your aim, personal experiences seldom fail to hold the attention 
of an audience. They are frequently more illuminating and 
more convincing than other speech materials. 

Do not overlook, as a source of information, conversation 
and interviews with persons who really h§,ve something to con¬ 
tribute on the subject. On many questions, current magazines 
will yield valuable information. More than ever, our maga¬ 
zines have become outlets for representative opinions in almost 
all fields of thought — economics, politics, social problems, 
science, philosophy. 

On involved questions, where much investigation is to be 
made, consult your librarian for additional and unusual sources 
of information. Take your notes on cards, not in notebooks, 
and use the cards sparingly on the floor. Exact quotations 
may properly be read from cards in any kind of speech. Be¬ 
yond that, cards are crutches, and not to be used except in 
emergencies. 


EXERCISES 

i. Choose a subject for a ten-minute speech to be given later in 
class, and make as complete a bibliography of the subject as you 
can, for magazines, books, newspapers, etc. Make your refer¬ 
ences definite and use cards. 


38 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


2. Read and criticize in writing Edward Bok’s lecture, “Keys to 
Success.” {Mod. El.: I, Vol. IV). 

a. Note the informal and personal style. 

b. Observe the striking effect Mr. Bok gets from relating a per¬ 
sonal experience with President Hayes. 

c. Do you think he gains by withholding until the last who the 
reporter was? Why? 

d. What is the dominant feeling aroused by the speech? 

3. “Be a good observer.” 

a. Tell about some interesting incident or phenomenon that you 
have observed lately, either on the street car, in the classroom, 
or elsewhere. Give as many details as possible. Suggest how 
this might be used in a speech. 

b. “The law of the pendulum is a law of life.” Give an example 
of this from your own observations. 

4. Read Lincoln’s “ Cooper Union Speech ” and observe how he goes 
to original sources for his evidence for the first half of the speech. 

5. Study critically the lecture, “Masters of the Situation,” by James 
T. Fields, and note how much the author draws on personal ex¬ 
periences. Make a list of them. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Cooper Union Speech,” by Abraham Lincoln (Vol. XI). 

“The Farmer and the Cities,” by Henry W. Grady {Grady). 
“Masters of the Situation,” by James T. Fields {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 
“Get Facts: Look Far: Think Through,” by William C. Redfield. 1 

References 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XVI. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chap. XV. 
James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements 
of Speech (1926), Chap. XIII. 

1 This speech appears on page 413 of this volume. 


CHAPTER V 


SPEECH ORGANIZATION: THE OUTLINE 

We develop a speech in much the same way that we do any 
other composition, except that in a speech we have to be careful 
about the way in which our ideas hang together. The reason 
is that the relationship of ideas must be made very plain, so 
that the audience can grasp it as the speech is uttered. In 
reading an essay, we can stop to reflect about the bearing 
which one idea has on the rest. In listening to a speech, we 
must understand what is said when it is said. 

Importance of Good Structure. In point of structure, a 
speech is the most exacting of all forms of composition. Care¬ 
ful speech organization is one of the primary requisites of a 
good speech, and the speaker who disregards it does so at his 
peril. The ordinary mind is not overanalytical; furthermore, 
there is so much aimless talking in conversation that we have 
a tendency to carry this lack of order into our speech-making. 
Many speeches remind one of the title of a once popular song, 
“I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.” 

No matter what kind of speech one is going to make — 
unless, perhaps, it be one for pure entertainment — a precise 
purpose or aim must always be sought. In informative speeches 
this is usually a simple matter; in persuasive speeches it may 
be a very difficult matter. If one wants to explain the operation 
of a telephone exchange in a big city, the speech problem is 
clear and unmistakable: it is to make the audience understand 
the process involved. If one wishes to explain how a radio tube 
manages, in effect, to hear and talk, the problem is already 
defined. It may be a very difficult one, but the aim of the 
speech is fairly well fixed. If one chooses to talk about the 

39 


40 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Eighteenth Amendment, however, or the League of Nations, or 
disarmament, there are a score or more aspects to each of these 
questions, any one of which he may wish to discuss. It is 
therefore important that one should determine as definitely as 
possible the precise phase he wants to discuss. 

I recall a student of more than ordinary ability once making 
a speech on the Eighteenth Amendment, lasting perhaps ten 
or fifteen minutes. It was a rather carefully prepared speech, 
and it was plain that the student spoke from conviction as well 
as from considerable knowledge of the question. When he got 
through speaking, some members of the class were asked to 
give the purpose or aim of the speech. No one could. It took 
five or ten minutes to ferret out precisely what he was driving 
at, and when we had finally discovered it and formulated a 
proposition, it was this: “The Eighteenth Amendment has dis¬ 
couraged, or wrought havoc with, temperance.” The idea was 
that, since the passing of the amendment, temperance as an 
ideal among young people — a movement which had gained 
great momentum in the pre-amendment period — was no more. 
The result was that young people no longer felt the inhibitions 
of former days. It was an excellent idea to develop, with much 
evidence to support it, but no one caught the real aim with any 
degree of definiteness. The trouble was that the message was 
not sufficiently clear in the mind of the speaker, when he pre¬ 
pared the speech, to serve properly as a guide in the choice and 
organization of his materials. Or if it was, then the speaker 
did not know how to manage the movement of his speech. 

Another student once spoke on the subject of forest fires. 
Without any apparent aim, he simply began to talk on forest 
fires, and continued to talk on forest fires until he had what 
passed for a speech on forest fires. The speech was a jumbled 
mess from beginning to end and revealed only vaguely, even 
to an inquiring mind, what the speaker was driving at. The 
speaker had a few interesting facts about the accidental cause 
of forest fires, such as that cigarettes when thrown into dry 


THE OUTLINE 


4i 


grass set fire in seventeen cases out of nineteen. When asked 
what type of speech he was making and what his purpose was, 
he could not tell. Neither could anybody else. 

From the speech several ideas emerged somewhat vaguely. 
One was that forest fires were difficult to fight for lack of ade¬ 
quate equipment. Another was that there is much carelessness 
on the part of tourists and campers in regard to forest fires, 
and that while lightning may occasionally set a fire, most of 
them are the result of some form of carelessness. A statement 
or two was made about the annual devastation of forest fires, 
but no facts were given, and the idea was not developed. 

Typical Speech Plan. If we should put these propositions 
together in proper order, and give them appropriate statement, 
we should have a speech plan somewhat as follows: 

Type of Speech: Impressive. 

Purpose: We should work to prevent forest fires. 

Sub-idea I: Forest fires work great devastation every year. 
Sub-idea II: Forest fires are caused largely by carelessness. 
Sub-idea III: Once started, they are extremely difficult to control. 

Here is the framework of a typical impressive speech. The 
selection of speech materials will be governed wholly by their 
value in supporting these propositions and bringing them home 
impressively to the audience. 

Importance of Definite Purpose. The first thing to do, then, 
in planning a speech is to determine as definitely and precisely 
as possible just what you wish to accomplish — or just what 
your purpose is. What definite response do you wish from the 
audience? This can always be expressed in a sentence, which 
we may call statement of aim or purpose sentence. This must be 
broad enough to include all the speaker wishes to say on the 
subject; and it must be so limited in scope that the speaker 
can give it adequate support in the time at his disposal. 

When once formulated, such a statement — always a com¬ 
plete sentence — will furnish you an exact guide for choosing 


42 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


your materials and rejecting those that do not serve your aim. 
Good speaking is frequently best served by drastic rejection of 
speech materials. There is always a temptation to use ma¬ 
terials that one has gathered; but unless they further the end 
of the speech, they should be rigidly excluded. 

Main Divisions of a Speech. 1 Having determined a precise 
purpose, and presumably gathered effective speech materials in 
support of that purpose, the next step is the organization of 
your materials, or grouping related ideas under a few appro¬ 
priate headings or propositions. These are the main divisions 
of the speech, and are variously known as sub-ideas , or main 
ideas, or supporting ideas. Arthur Edward Phillips in his 
Effective Speaking calls them sub-ideas, and perhaps that is as 
good a name as any for them, for they are subordinate to the 
purpose or aim. In argumentative speeches or in debates when 
put in the form of questions, they are known as the main issues. 
These propositions cannot be arbitrarily selected any more than 
we can arbitrarily select our direction for traveling if we want 
to get to a certain place. They inhere in the question, and to 
find them usually requires thorough analysis of the subject. 
The sub-ideas or the main divisions of a speech should have 
the following earmarks: 

1. They are always relatively broad propositions, capable of support, 
amplification, and development. 

2. They should always read as supports of the statement of aim or 
purpose sentence; or of the central idea 2 if one is used. 

3- They should be comprehensive enough so that if they are properly 
substantiated, they will in turn establish, or make sufficiently 
vivid and impressive, the aim of the speaker. 

4. They should, in all persuasive speeches, be linked up with vital 
interests of the audience; that is, they should permit of want 
appeal 3 and so grip hearers. 

5. There should not be too many. From three to five is a good 
number. 

1 To be distinguished from introduction, body, and conclusion. 

2 Cf. page 50. 3 Cf. Chapter IX, page 118. 


THE OUTLINE 


43 


Suppose we refer to the speech on forest fires and see if the 
plan complies with these requirements. We shall find that the 
sub-ideas, I, II, and III, are all broad propositions, capable of 
development and support, and still not so broad but that they 
can be fairly well supported in a short speech. They all read 
as supports of the statement of aim or purpose sentence. They 
are probably comprehensive or inclusive enough so that if the 
speaker carefully selects his materials and brings them home 
vividly to his listeners, he will reasonably well accomplish his 
purpose. 

They are formulated in such a way as to make them vital 
or gripping to the ordinary audience. The second and third 
borrow interest from the first. You will note that there are 
only three sub-ideas. 

In working out support for each of the sub-ideas, we go 
through much the same process of analysis. Referring again 
to the speech on forest fires, we can take any one of the sub¬ 
ideas and find supporting ideas for it, just as we did for the 
proposition expressing the aim of the speech. Let us consider 
the third one. 

III. Forest fires, when once started, are extremely hard to control, 

for 

A. They often cover large areas. 

B. They are often far from centers of population. 

C. It is difficult to get adequate equipment to the scene of fire. 

D. The available water-supply is often insufficient. 

The process of analysis and development suggested here is 
much the same as in any other well-organized composition. The 
development of any theme or subject consists essentially in the 
discovery of related propositions and the giving of such propo¬ 
sitions adequate support. All forms of support, all speech 
materials, no matter what they are — whether facts, examples, 
testimony, illustrations, analogies, hypothetical cases — are al¬ 
ways used in support of some proposition expressed or implied. 


44 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Propositions in a Speech. It is of some importance to iiote 
here that all ideas take the form of propositions. We cannot 
express an idea or a thought except in the form of a proposition, 
or complete statement. “Going to college” is a phrase, not 
an idea, and does not really say anything. “You should go to 
college” is an idea, a proposition, and says something very 
definite. Such a proposition may serve to express either the 
purpose of a speech or any one of the supporting ideas of the 
speech. 

From this there follows a very important principle of speech¬ 
making: namely, that a speech is a series of propositions and 
their supports. This is something we should always remember. 
It may be said with some degree of emphasis that, if a speaker 
does not know at any time in the course of a speech just what 
proposition he is supporting, it is but the simple truth that 
he does not know what he is talking about. The same, of 
course, may be said of the audience. If they do not know what 
proposition a speaker is supporting, neither do they know what 
he is talking about. 

The Outline. The best guide to consistent thinking that we 
have discovered is the outline. This serves as a standard by 
which to check our thought processes and determine to what 
extent our analysis of the question is correct. Form the habit 
of making an outline for every speech. It has many advantages, 
among them these: 

1. It guides us to consistent, although not necessarily to correct, 
thinking. 

2. It gives the speech definite movement. 

3. It helps to make the speech clear to the audience. 

4. It is an aid to the memory. 

5. If rightly used, it will help to hold attention. 

6. It encourages the extempore style of speaking and discourages 
word-for-word memorizing. 

Kinds of Outlines. There are two methods of outlining a 
speech, or two kinds of outlines. One is the topical outline, in 


THE OUTLINE 


45 

which single words and phrases may be used. The other is the 
logical or sentence outline, in which only complete declarative 
sentences are used. 

Both kinds have their place. For informative or expository 
speeches, the topical outline is frequently used, and it is suf¬ 
ficient. If one wants to give a travelogue, for instance, and 
tell about interesting scenes, places, persons, and experiences, 
the topical outline will usually do. It serves to give direction 
and orderliness to the speech. Observe that while you use 
terms and phrases in the outline, you are always supporting 
propositions when you come to make the speech. 

i. The Topical Outline. As an example of a topical outline, 
let us consider the following outline for an account of a trip to 
the Icelandic Millennial Celebration. 

Purpose: To entertain with an account of the trip 

I. Ocean journey 

A. The interesting people we met on the boat 

B. The activities we enjoyed 

II. Reykjavik, the capital 

A. The people 

B. The dwellings 

C. The schools 

D. The hotels 

III. The Centennial Celebration 

A. The Althing: place where parliament was founded in 930 a.d. 

B. World representatives 

C. Important meetings and speeches 

IV. Impressions of the people 

A. Their hospitality 

B. Their industry 

C. Their literary attainments 

Every speech should have a definite plan, and the topical 
outline indicates the order of ideas to be treated, and the main 
headings under each. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


46 

Grouping of ideas may be just as desirable in an informative 
speech as in the other types. After all, a large part of explana¬ 
tion or exposition consists in showing the relationship of parts 
or of ideas. If, for example, you are going to talk about radio 
tubes, you will not get the best results by just starting some¬ 
where and then going on more or less blindly and aimlessly 
until you have made a speech. When you come to study and 
organize your ideas on the subject, you will find that they will 
lend themselves to some natural form of grouping. There may 
be several ways of grouping the ideas, and one may be about 
as good as another, but some form of grouping there must be, 
and the best one of course is the one that will make the subject 
clearest to the audience with the least mental effort. You 
might want to begin with a brief history of the technology of 
the radio tube. You may discover, however, that it is easy to 
tire an audience with a long historical narrative unless it is 
carefully done, and facts and incidents are selected that have 
real interest value. History for the sake of history may be 
easily overdone. Ask yourself the question, “What do my 
hearers want to know about this?” Do they want primarily 
to know who made contributions to the technological develop¬ 
ment of the tube, or do they want to know just how it works — 
what part it plays in reproducing the human voice? Seize upon 
some point of interest for your audience, and when you have 
satisfied their curiosity in that, you may go into details which 
before might not have had any interest at all. The important 
thing is to have a definite plan, a definite order or arrangement of 
ideas. That order must be determined upon with a view to inter¬ 
esting your audience and bringing home to them with as much 
clarity as possible whatever ideas or processes you wish to explain. 

2. The Logical Outline , for Persuasive Speeches. It is only 
when we come to make persuasive speeches, especially of the 
argumentative type, that the sentence or logical outline becomes 
important. Here the work of analysis is much more difficult, 
and straight thinking correspondingly harder. 


THE OUTLINE 


47 

The rules for the sentence or logical outline are few and easily 
understood. The difficulty always is to discover the right rela¬ 
tionship between ideas; but when that relationship has once 
been found, it is not difficult to throw the ideas or propositions 
into outline form. 

Let us suppose that some of your best high school friends 
have made up their minds not to go to college and that you are 
attending college and want your friends to go also. You are 
impressed with the value of a college education as a preparation 
for living a purposeful life. You have here a problem in per¬ 
suasion. Your purpose would be expressed in the proposition 
addressed to your high school associates: “You should go to 
college.” 

Now your problem is to present ideas that will stir up in 
them a desire to go to college. What those ideas should be 
may require careful thought. You might aim at your friends 
through their pocketbooks, first, and say to them, “It will 
increase your earning power.” That is a very broad proposition 
and needs to be supported. To get at the facts may be difficult. 
Some research has been done to show the earnings of persons 
at different levels of education. These show that the lifetime 
earnings of a person with an eighth-grade schooling are on an 
average $60,000; of a high school graduate, $88,000; and of a 
university graduate, $160,000. You could probably find many 
other things to say on this subject; for instance, you might refer 
to college graduates that you know, who are drawing good 
salaries. 

What else could you say to create a desire in your friends to 
go to college? Well, you could say: “College education will 
give you personality development.” This is a broad proposi¬ 
tion too, and requires support. Many things certainly can be 
said in support of it. “You will be a better-informed man. 
Your social nature will be developed by rubbing elbows with 
all kinds of people. Your power of speech will be improved. 
A college education will develop your artistic tastes.” 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


48 

For a third main idea you might say to them: “It is fun to 
go to college.” You could support that according to your 
friends’ notions of what would be fun. Safely, you could say: 
“It is fun to know things. It is fun to engage in or attend big 
athletic events. Social life at college would be enjoyable.” 

These are only a few suggestions as to what may be said on 
this subject. There are many other ideas just as good or better. 
If we throw this into outline form, we have the following: 

Type of Speech: Argumentative 

Purpose: To persuade your friends that they should go to college 

Introduction 

I. The choice of a career is important. 

II. Our education determines largely what our career shall be. 

Body 

I. College education will increase your earning power, for 

A. Statistics on average lifetime earnings show this: 

1. Average lifetime earnings of persons with grade schooling 
only are $60,000. 

2. Average lifetime earnings of persons with high school 
training are $88,000. 

3. Average lifetime earnings of college graduates are 
$160,000. 

B. These figures were found by an extensive survey. 1 

II. College education will give you personality development, for 

A. It will give you much interesting information. 

B. It will develop your social nature. 

C. It will develop your artistic tastes. 

D. It will help you develop cultivated speech. 

III. Going to college is fun, for 

A. It is fun to know things. 

B. It is fun to engage in or attend athletic events. 

C. Social life at college will be enjoyable. 

1 The criticism can be made that these figures are not convincing, since 
colleges and high schools are selective and tend to attract persons of more 
than average ability. We are concerned here with form rather than logic, 
however, and the argument may be taken for what it is worth. 


49 


THE OUTLINE 

Conclusion 

I. College education will increase earning power. 

II. It will give personality development. 

III. It will be enjoyable. 

We may formulate certain general rules. 

Rules eor Outlining a Speech 

1. Every outline is divided into three parts: introduction, body, and 
conclusion. 

2. Symbols are used to show the relationship of ideas. The follow¬ 
ing order of symbols has been widely adopted: 

I. _ 

A. _ 

1. _ 

a. _ 

b. _ 

2 . ___ 

B. __ 

II. _ 

A. _ 

etc. 

3. All statements in a logical outline or brief are complete sentences. 

4. Every speech has a certain number of main divisions or sub-ideas, 
I, II, and III, so-called because they are subordinate to and 
support your purpose. The number three is not arbitrary, al¬ 
though most often used. 

5. Propositions I, II, III, or sub-ideas, always read as supports of the 
proposition expressing the purpose sentence; or of the central 
idea if one is used. 

6. General Rule. Every proposition in a logical outline should read 
as support of the proposition to which it is subordinate. 

7. The proper connecting word between a proposition in an outline 
and its subordinate is for or because. If you have occasion to use 
hence or therefore, it simply means inverted order. 

8. The conclusion in an outline merely states the main divisions or 
sub-ideas of the speech. 











THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


50 

Examples of How Great Speakers Have Planned Their 
Speeches. Let us take as our first example Wendell Phillips’ 
argumentative speech on capital punishment delivered before 
a committee of the Massachusetts legislature. If you will take 
the trouble to examine this speech, you will find that it has a 
very definite purpose, and three very definite main divisions or 
sub-ideas. The broad outline may be stated as follows: 

Purpose: Capital punishment should be abolished in Massachu¬ 
setts for all offenses. 

Sub-idea I: The state has not the right to take life. 

Sub-idea II: The Bible does not impose an obligation on the state 
to take life. 

Sub-idea III: It is not necessary for our protection to take life. 

Observe, first, that all the propositions embodying the main 
divisions of the speech or sub-ideas read as supports of the pur¬ 
pose. Also, that if these propositions are adequately supported 
and established, it is not easy to escape the conclusion expressed 
in the purpose. The speaker would then get the mental response 
wanted; namely, a favorable attitude for abolishing capital pun¬ 
ishment, and action in accordance with that attitude when oc¬ 
casion presented. 

The Central Idea. Sometimes it is an advantage to have a 
central idea , which gives a definite direction and a unified effect 
to the whole speech. The central idea always supports the pur¬ 
pose of the speech, and is in turn supported by the sub-ideas. 
The central idea is chosen with reference to the audience, and 
must be of such a nature that, if accepted by the audience, 
the purpose will be attained. It is useful in limiting a broad 
subject. 

William Jennings Bryan, after taking a trip around the world 
and observing conditions in all the leading countries, delivered 
in Chicago and other centers a speech on world progress, in¬ 
tended as a sort of tonic for reformers. He threw his subject 


THE OUTLINE 


51 

into the following simple outline, and drew upon a wealth of 
illustrative material to drive home his points. 

Purpose: Reformers should take heart. 

Central Idea: The world is making progress. 

Sub-idea I: The world is progressing intellectually. 
Sub-idea II: The world is progressing morally. 

Sub-idea III: The world is progressing politically. 

Observe here that all the main divisions support the central 
idea, and that if these propositions are established, it is very 
likely that the central idea will be, and the purpose attained. 

Suppose you were to make a speech on automobile accidents. 
You might select your purpose, and make the scope of your 
speech somewhat as follows: 

Purpose: We should work to prevent automobile accidents. 
Central Idea: Automobile accidents can be greatly reduced. 
Sub-idea 1 : Speeding can be largely reduced by more strict law 
enforcement. 

Sub-idea II: Incompetent and careless drivers can be in large 
part eliminated by licensing. 

Sub-idea III: Dangerous grade crossings can be abolished. 

Sub-idea IV: Country-wide “safety” propaganda would be effec¬ 
tive. 

If you could support these propositions adequately, your 
central idea would be accepted. Your purpose would be rea¬ 
sonably well attained. 

Number of Sub-ideas. Observe that both Phillips and Bryan 
used three main divisions or sub-ideas in their speeches while 
we used four. There is no law, except a psychological one, as 
to the number of supporting ideas to use in a speech. The 
ancient writers on this subject had it settled two thousand 
years ago that from three to five is a good number of main 
ideas to develop in a speech. We have not discovered any 
good reason for changing that rule. It may sound more or less 
arbitrary, but to develop too many separate ideas in the course 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


52 

of a single speech leads to confusion and an overtaxing of the 
memory. It is possible to group ideas on almost all subjects 
in such a way as to observe this time-honored rule of the 
ancients. It is just as good today as it was in the time of 
Pericles, and it was pretty good then. 

Relation between Outline and Speech. Finished outlines 
may well be used until the process of making an outline is 
thoroughly mastered and the structure of a speech thoroughly 
understood. When that goal is once attained, it is not necessary 
to make a finished outline to make a good speech, although it 
may be well enough to make an outline of every speech as long 
as class work continues. An outline is a guide to clear and 
orderly presentation of ideas. It is the framework of the speech 
structure, but it is a great mistake to think that the structure 
should bear much resemblance to the framework, when once 
completed. 

It is a mistake, for example, to think that the order of ideas 
in an outline is necessarily the order of ideas as they should be 
presented in the speech. The leading ideas in an outline — the 
main divisions of the speech, or sub-ideas — are in the form of 
conclusions; and conclusions, as a rule, should not be stated in 
a speech until the evidence has been presented in support of 
them. That is especially true of beliefs or propositions that 
are unwelcome to the audience. To state such propositions 
boldly at the outset is to arouse contrariant ideas in the minds 
of the listeners. It is a rule of persuasion never to draw an 
unwelcome conclusion until the evidence in support of it has 
been presented — until, in fact, it is no longer unwelcome. A 
much better way is simply to point the direction in which you 
are planning to move by means of direct or indirect ques¬ 
tions. 

You will observe that Lincoln in his “ Springfield Speech ” does 
not say, “I am going to prove to you that the leaders of the 
Democratic Party are in a conspiracy to nationalize slavery.” 
He gives it as his opinion that the slavery question will not be 


THE OUTLINE 


53 

settled until the country is either all free or all slave. Then 
he asks, “Have we not a tendency to the latter condition?” 
Thereupon he presents his evidence and finally draws his con¬ 
clusion. In the brief, the proposition would be stated at the 
outset as a conclusion; in the speech, the proposition is not 
stated until all the supports for it have been given. 

An outline is not an end in itself. It is only a means to an 
end. When you have once grasped the underlying structure 
of a speech, and learned to organize your materials in a logical 
and orderly way, it makes very little difference whether you 
make an outline or not. It is probable that few speakers in 
actual practice make much use of the logical outline. We have 
notes on many of Lincoln’s speeches, but no outlines. Burke 
is said to have written the “Conciliation Speech” eleven times 
before it suited him, but if he made a complete outline of it, 
there is no record of it. Many public speeches, however, would 
be improved if more careful outlines were made of them. 

Recently I have listened to three distinguished speakers in 
convocation hour: one a president of a great endowed uni¬ 
versity; another a man of letters, author of one of the popular 
novels of the day; the third a Congresswoman of more than 
ordinary speaking ability and charm. If there was in any of 
these speeches a clearly conceived and logically carried out 
plan, it was not revealed. Any listener if asked to state the 
message of any of them would probably have had to scratch 
his head and admit that it was not very clear to him. The 
lack of any definite plan or outline seemed to me to mar the 
effectiveness of these speeches. Aside from that, the speeches 
all had power and charm. There is much aimless speaking, 
these days, and the best way to give any speech a definite 
objective is to throw it into outline form and so check up on 
one’s thought processes. 

In Conclusion. Learn to make good outlines, and learn to 
understand their value and their limitations. Let them serve 
you and not master you or make you their slave. Try to under- 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


54 

stand clearly the relation of outline to speech. This is a sub¬ 
ject that should command your very earnest attention. There 
is no doubt that it is entirely possible to spoil a good speech by 
making a too minute outline or by following the outline too 
closely. On the other hand, it is difficult to make a good speech 
without having gone through the analytical process which 
underlies all good outlining. Careful analysis spells clear prog¬ 
ress — a very great merit in a speech. To present a clear 
analysis of a subject, giving speech an orderly movement, and 
still not be the slave of the outline that expresses the analysis, 
is something of an art. Here, as elsewhere, it is true that the 
greatest art is the art that conceals itself. 

The best way to get the proper understanding of the relation 
of an outline to a speech is to outline a good speech, and observe 
how far the outline falls short of suggesting what there is in the 
speech. 1 Then you might try to make a speech from the outline 
and compare it with the original. This would be very good 
discipline, and probably impress upon you more forcefully 
than any other experience could both the usefulness and the 
shortcomings of an outline. An outline helps us to move clearly 
and in a straight line. It does not help us to move forcefully, 
or interestingly, or concretely, or with originality and charm. 
Learn to use it, and learn to realize its limitations. Do not 
follow it slavishly. 

EXERCISES 

i. Using the sentence outline in this chapter as a guide, outline 

material for a speech on one of the following subjects, choosing 

either side: 

a. There should be faculty censorship of student publications. 

b. College athletics interfere unduly with scholarship. 

c. Installment buying should be discouraged. 

d. The jury system should be abolished. 

e. Any other subject that appeals to you. 

1 For a complete outline and speech, see Lincoln’s “ Springfield Speech, ” 
which appears on page 426 of this volume. 


THE OUTLINE 


55 

2. Use this outline for your talk in class, making it a point to add 
those elements not indicated by the outline — rhetorical questions, 
examples, illustrations, effective repetition, etc. 

Have your outline on the board before the class, if convenient, 
so that the class, too, can recognize these elements. 

3. Let the entire class outline simply the talks given by its members 
and then report on the material that must necessarily escape the 
outline. 

4. Outline Lincoln’s “ Cooper Union Speech. ” Observe how far your 
outline falls short of suggesting what there is in the speech. 

5. Make a thorough study of Lincoln’s “ Springfield Speech ” and the 
outline of it. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Capital Punishment,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. II). 

“Cooper Union Speech,” by Abraham Lincoln (Vol. XI). 

“The Wastes and Burdens of Society,” by Henry Ward Beecher 
{Beecher: I). 

“Boyhood, the Greatest Asset of Any Nation,” by John R. Mott 
(. Lindgren). 

“Why Men Strike,” by Edward A. Filene (Vol. IV). 

References 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chaps. XVII, 
XVIII, XIX. 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements 
of Speech (1926), Chap. XV. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: The Principles 
of Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XVI. 

Charles Henry Woolbert: Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 
1927), Chap. XVI. 


CHAPTER VI 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 

Suppose you have chosen your subject; carefully formulated 
a proposition broad enough to include all you want to say, 
which will roughly express your purpose; gathered your speech 
materials through interviews and readings, after taking an in¬ 
ventory of your own thoughts on the question; and finally 
organized and arranged your materials in orderly and logical 
form on cards as suggested and in outline form — then what? 
Are you prepared to go before your class or any other audience 
and make your speech? 

If you think so, you make a very great mistake — a mistake 
which many students and speakers make to their sorrow. You 
should realize that the most important part of the preparation 
of a speech is still to be made: namely, preparation for presen¬ 
tation, or preparing the speech for delivery. How shall this be 
done? 

Methods of Preparing a Speech for Delivery. There are 
several methods of preparing a speech for presentation. One 
may write out and memorize all of it. One may use a carefully 
prepared outline as a basis for rehearsal and go over the speech 
again and again before an imaginary audience, and in this way 
prepare it for delivery. One may combine these two methods 
and write out the most important parts and extemporize the 
rest. One may write out the speech and read it from manuscript. 
Finally, one may dispense with any preparation whatsoever, 
and give the speech impromptu. This method, as a rule, is 
not expected to be used in class, but the unexpected sometimes 
happens! 

As to which method is the best, or whether any one method 
56 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


57 

is the best, it behooves one not to be too dogmatic. The more 
experience one has in preparing speeches and in observing others 
at work, the more one comes to realize that perhaps no one 
method is best for everybody, but that each must work out a 
method best suited to his type of mind and the results he 
wishes to accomplish. There are so many and such pronounced 
individual differences among persons in this respect that no 
rigid rules can be laid down. Henry Ward Beecher in his 
lectures to Yale students set it down emphatically that a 
preacher must use either one method or the other. He must 
either extemporize all of his sermon or he must write out all of 
it. He cannot extemporize parts of it and read the rest from 
manuscript. If he does, he will go down between the two 
processes. For many years I took him at his word and passed 
the advice on to my students. 

Of late years, however, I have listened somewhat regularly 
to the discourses of a minister who does exactly what Beecher 
said could not be done; he writes out his manuscript, has it 
on his desk before him every Sunday morning, reads from it 
when it suits him and extemporizes when that suits him better. 
He does this so smoothly that a stranger coming into the 
church would probably not know that he had a manuscript at 
all. Still it is there, and perhaps half the sermon is read from 
it. These discourses occupy a whole hour every Sunday morn¬ 
ing, and about a thousand people come to hear them. They 
are packed with solid matter — are in fact lectures rather than 
sermons. The minister, with this method, is an exceptionally 
engaging speaker. The style of speaking is distinctly conver¬ 
sational, simple, direct, impressive. 

It used to be said of former president Grover Cleveland that 
he could write out a speech and give it from memory without 
much preparation. Many of his speeches suggest the written 
manuscript and exemplify a style that is ponderous and un¬ 
wieldy. Beecher, on the other hand, has told us that he did 
not begin to throw his Plymouth Church sermons into definite 


58 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

form until after breakfast Sunday morning. While that state¬ 
ment may be true, broadly speaking, we also know it to be 
true that Beecher’s fertile and imaginative mind was not slum¬ 
bering during the week, but active and alert all the time. 
Beecher was a great observer and gathered information and 
illustrations for his sermons in his daily haunts, visiting Tif¬ 
fany’s, walking along the piers and watching the longshoremen 
at work, traveling through the country on his lecture tours; 
so that when Sunday came around, he had but to draw upon 
his vast resources for the substance of his sermon. There is 
no doubt that he used the extempore method consistently in 
his pulpit, and by it produced discourses both finished and 
powerful. Many volumes of them have been published and 
are available to the student. 

These are the methods of mature men, and while they are 
interesting, they are not necessarily suited to the beginner or 
the immature speaker. We shall now consider in some detail 
the several methods that may be used in preparing a speech 
for presentation, noting the advantages and disadvantages of 
each. First and foremost, we shall deal with the extempore 
method, because we wish to hold it forth as fundamental to 
the most efficient speech training, and as furnishing the best 
preparation for the kind of speaking most people in practical 
life are called upon to do. 

The Extempore Method. The word is derived from the 
Latin ex, meaning “from” or “out of,” and tempus, meaning 
“time.” The literal meaning, therefore, is at the time, or per¬ 
haps better, out of the moment. That is to say, the speaking 
or the giving of language to the thought is the product of the 
moment. In other words, the extempore style of speaking 
contemplates, in strict construction, that the language of the 
speaker shall be the product of the moment. We do not, how¬ 
ever, construe the meaning of the term so strictly as that. To 
make language wholly the product of the moment may do well 
enough for seasoned speakers, but certainly not for amateurs. 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


59 

It is a goal to work for, an ideal to be held in mind, but it is 
one seldom attained. We use the term more loosely, to indi¬ 
cate almost any method of preparing a speech, other than the 
impromptu — which contemplates no preparation at all — and 
the memoriter — that is, writing out a speech and memorizing 
it verbatim. 

Let us now try to understand what we really mean by the 
extempore method of preparing a speech, using the term some¬ 
what broadly as suggested. 

The best way to do this is to imagine yourself before the 
audience that you are expecting to address and to proceed to 
make the speech, just as you would if you were before them. 
Express your ideas, not vaguely but in definite words and sen¬ 
tences. Begin with the introduction and go through whatever 
explanatory remarks you think are necessary and appropriate. 
If some words in the statement of your subject need defining, 
here is the place to define them. If a brief history of the subject 
is needed, give it. Try to arouse an interest in the subject you 
are talking about. 

That done, proceed with your first point, and try to say all 
you can on it. You will have to pause once in a while and do 
some thinking; refer to your outline or cards to refresh your 
memory. Try to express your ideas as simply and clearly as 
you can, remembering that the vocabulary of good speaking is 
at least ninety per cent words of one and two syllables. Be in¬ 
formal and confidential in your attitude toward your audience. 
Talk to them much as you would to a group of your friends. 
Do not be afraid to use the personal pronouns “I” and “you.” 
It will help you to get into close rapport with your listeners. 
Pay attention to the best arrangement of ideas. Let the order 
be natural, and if possible climactic. When you get through 
with each main point or division in the speech, be sure to let 
your audience know that you are through with it, and that you 
are going on with your next one. Of course, if you have only 
a three-minute speech, it will not have many divisions or tran- 


6o 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


sitions. But if you have an eight- or ten-minute speech, it 
may have several divisions. Transitions from one point to 
another should be clear and definite. A speech should have 
clear and orderly movement from one point to another. Just 
as in walking we move by steps, so in speaking we should move 
by steps quite as definite. The more clearly you have in mind 
just what you are trying to accomplish, the more clear will be 
the progress of your speech, and the more definite its movement. 

In this way, proceed with the speech until you reach the end 
of it. It may cost you considerable effort to do so, but the 
effort will be handsomely worth while. You should rehearse 
your speech not only once but several times — as many times 
as may be necessary to ensure fluency when you come to make 
the speech. The amount of practice of this kind that is neces¬ 
sary will depend on how your mind works, and how easy or 
difficult it is for you to speak. To some persons words come 
more easily than to others. Some have better memories than 
others. Some, therefore, will require less and others more of 
this kind of practice. All will be benefited greatly by a consid¬ 
erable amount of it, for it is the best method of developing 
fluency in speaking. 

This kind of speaking will develop what is generally called 
the extempore or extemporaneous style of speaking. It is for 
ordinary purposes the most serviceable and practicable method 
of making speeches. It requires thorough preparation in ad¬ 
vance, a careful selection and arrangement of ideas, and much 
practice in giving effective expression to those ideas. It goes 
without saying that if one goes over the ground carefully several 
times, using definite language, some things will become more 
or less fixed in memory. The sequence of the more important 
ideas will become fixed; and to some extent words and sentences, 
or phraseology, will have taken definite form. But note that 
whatever memorizing is done by this method is in terms of 
ideas rather than in terms of words. If, in the course of prac¬ 
tice, well-selected words and effective phrases have become 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


61 


more or less set in the speech pattern, there is no harm in that. 
The important thing is that when you come to deliver your 
speech, you shall do so with confidence and spontaneity, and 
give the impression of grappling with your audience as you go 
along, instead of reciting something that you have memorized 
verbatim. . As you gain in confidence and develop fluency, you 
may safely leave more and more to the occasion. But in your 
early practice, leaving too much to the inspiration of the mo¬ 
ment may prove your ruin. 

It is one thing to write out a speech and learn it word for 
word; it is quite another thing to go over your speech again and 
again in rehearsal until even some phrases and sentences may 
have taken on definite form. The first method may develop 
woodenness in speaking unless carefully managed; the second 
will develop fluency and flexibility. 

Walking and Speech Preparation. If you want to do good 
work in preparing for a speech, go out for a walk. Preparing a 
speech is, among other things, a thinking process of a high 
order. It requires sustained thinking and mental concentration. 
It is important, therefore, that conditions shall be as favorable 
as possible for mental activity. It is a familiar fact that the 
brain works best under the stimulation of a rather lively blood 
circulation. Almost every one has had the experience of being 
in his study and not being able to inveigle a single idea into 
consciousness, and then going out for a walk and finding a 
troop of them crowding the brain. The reason is simply that 
the blood circulation stimulates the brain and vitalizes our 
thought processes. You can try this out for yourself. When 
you have once set the thinking process going, you can go back 
to your room and work. When Wendell Phillips had an impor¬ 
tant speech to make, he would go out for a walk and then shut 
himself up in his study for hours at a time. Gladstone prepared 
some of his great parliamentary speeches while cutting down 
trees. Some would have it that Lincoln prepared some of his 
best speeches while splitting rails. This would probably have 


62 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


been correct but for the fact that Lincoln had quit splitting 
rails long before he made any speeches of consequence. It is 
not unlikely, however, that he prepared many of his legal ar¬ 
guments while walking the judicial circuit over the Illinois 
prairies in early days. At any rate, any activity that speeds 
up the circulation will do the work, even walking .briskly to 
and fro in one’s room. 

M. Sarcey, distinguished French lecturer, gives this advice: 

A lecture is never prepared except in walking. The movement of 
the body lashes the blood and aids the movement of the mind. You 
have possessed your memory of the themes from the development of 
which the lecture must be formed; pick one out of the pile, the first 
at hand, or the one you have most at heart, which for the moment 
attracts you most, and act as if you were before the public; improvise 
upon it. Yes, force yourself to improvise. Do not trouble yourself 
about badly constructed phrases, nor inappropriate words — go your 
way. Push on to the end of the development, and the end once 
reached, recommence the same exercise; recommence it three times, 
four times, ten times, without tiring. You will have some trouble 
at first. The development will be short and meager; but, little by 
little, around the principal theme there will group themselves acces¬ 
sory ideas, or pat anecdotes, that will extend and enrich it. Do not 
stop in this work until you notice that in taking up the same theme 
you fall into the same development, and that this development, with 
its turns of language and order of phrases, fixes itself in your memory. 

Language was primarily invented for speaking, not for writing; 
and since it embodies thought, there is no reason why it should not 
keep step with thought. The inability to express oneself freely is 
largely due to the habit of thinking without simultaneously shaping 
the thought in words. A thought remains nebulous even in the 
mind of the thinker as long as he does not concentrate it in words 
and form it into sentences. Accustom yourself, therefore, to verbal 
thinking. . . . The habit of thinking in words, of always trying 
to put your thought in a communicable form, will unconsciously 
cultivate the power of extemporization, which is the distinguishing 
mark of a good speaker. 1 

1 Quoted in Garrett P. Serviss: Eloquence , p. no. 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 63 

Writing Out Speeches. It is good practice to write out your 
speeches, especially in the early stages of preparation. We 
never know exactly what we can say on any subject until we 
have put it down in writing. As John Stuart Mill observes: 
“If you want to know whether you are thinking rightly, put 
your thought into words. It forces us to think clearly even 
when it cannot make us think correctly.” If you write out 
what you are going to say, however, be sure that you write as 
you would speak. Have your audience in mind all the time, 
and simply set down what you would say to them. Then, 
when you are through, you will have your speech in writing, 
and not an ordinary written manuscript. It is important to 
make the distinction, for young speakers have a tendency to 
speak as they write, rather than to write as they speak. Al¬ 
ways observe the simple, informal, personal style in all your 
writing for speech preparation. 

Do not memorize the speech when you have written it out. This 
warning should hardly be necessary after the suggestions that 
have been made. You might possibly make a better speech 
that way the first few times. That, however, is not primarily 
the kind of practice you want to cultivate, and it is more 
important to develop correct methods than to make good 
speeches to begin with. Use the writing process simply as a 
part of the practice in preparing your speech for presentation. 
If you have said something well in writing, you might use that 
in your speech, but memorizing any part will be incidental to 
the process of going over your speech materials in repeated 
practice as already suggested. 

John Bright, English parliamentarian and statesman, is 
quoted as having given the following advice to a friend. Re¬ 
member that John Bright was an experienced speaker. 

You can’t prepare your subject too thoroughly, but it is easy to 
overprepare your words. Divide your subject into two or three 
not more — main sections. For each section prepare “an island” 
by this I mean a carefully prepared sentence to clinch your argument. 


64 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Make this the conclusion of the section, and trust yourself to swim 
to the next island. Keep the best island for the peroration of the 
speech, and then sit down. ... To write speeches and then commit 
them to memory is, as you say, a double slavery which I could not 
bear. To speak without preparation, especially on great and solemn 
topics, is rashness, and cannot be recommended. When I intend 
to speak on anything that seems to me important I consider what it is 
that I wish to impress upon my audience. I do not write my facts 
or my arguments, but make notes on two or three or four slips of 
note-paper, giving the line of argument and the facts as they occur 
to my mind; and I leave the words to come at call while I am speak¬ 
ing. There are occasionally short passages which, for accuracy, I 
may write down; as sometimes, also — almost invariably — the con¬ 
cluding words or sentences may be written. 1 

Memorizing and Extempore Speaking. There is a great deal 
of memorizing to be done in preparing a speech, and it is not 
at all inconsistent with forming correct habits of speaking. The 
order of ideas must be well fixed in memory if the speech is to 
have clear and logical movement. Some of the language as 
indicated will also have taken more or less definite form if the 
speech has been carefully prepared. It is of some importance, 
therefore, to a speaker to know how he may best enlist the 
memory and get from it the greatest possible service. 

For speech purposes, there are three ways in which things 
may become fixed in memory; namely, through the muscles, 
through the eyes, and through the ears. Or, to put it differently, 
we can enlist the muscular , visual, and auditory memory. 

Try, for example, to call to mind some selection you learned 
when a child to give in school, one you can still give from mem¬ 
ory. How does it happen that you can repeat it? There are 
only three possible ways. Your organs of speech may have 
gone through the process of saying it so often that the order of 
muscular movements has become fixed, so that when you start 
it going, it will continue without much effort. It is possible, 

1 Quoted in Serviss: Eloquence, p. 108. 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


65 

although not likely, that you may have some visual images of 
the printed page where the selection appeared or perhaps visual 
images from the selection. You may also have heard your 
voice so often in saying it that one sound recalls another. If 
you have no visual or auditory images of the selection, then 
your memory of it is in the organs of speech. If you touch off 
the first set of muscle movements, the rest will follow with ease, 
provided you remember well the selection. It is a good deal 
like setting off a bunch of firecrackers: the first one sets fire 
to another, and that one to a third, and so on until the whole 
bunch is exploded. 

In preparing speeches, we should take advantage of what we 
know about the memory so as to get maximum results. We 
may, for instance, practice our speeches silently in our room or 
study, or on a street car, and get certain results. That kind of 
practice would harness only the muscular memory of our speech 
organs. Or we might have a good friend who would be willing 
to listen to us rehearse the speech, in which case we should 
get the benefit of the auditory memory as well. Then we might 
have an outline of our speech before us either on a sheet of 
paper or on cards, so as to form visual images of the order of 
ideas in the speech. The kind of practice that would be the 
most valuable would be the one that would harness all the 
forms of memory. The more closely the practice resembles the 
actual performance in giving the speech, including voice, gestures, 
and other bodily movements, the more valuable it is. For our 
muscle memory resides not only in the speech organs — tongue, 
throat, lips — but also in our arms, legs, head, and torso — in 
our whole body, in fact. 

The Value of Pictures for Extemporizing. The more one talks 
in terms of the concrete, the less one has to depend on word- 
for-word memorizing, and the easier it is to extemporize. In 
telling a story, relating a personal experience, describing a situ¬ 
ation, or giving an example or a hypothetical case, one does not 
care to have the language absolutely set. In fact, there is every 


66 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


advantage in not having the language set, unless one has gone 
over the ground so often that the words come without effort. 

The following comment from Alfred Flude, a lecturer who 
has traveled all over the world and won more than ordinary 
success as a speaker before schools and colleges, is interesting. 
Note its emphasis on pictures. 

I never committed but two talks to memory and I shall never do it 
again. It is a great mistake — for me at least. I remember, years 
ago, when I gave “The Baby Days,” listening to myself to see where 
I was. The work becomes too automatic. It is only as one creates 
while one works that one may secure the best results. At least, that 
is true of myself. 

Dr. Sadler and other scientists tell us that we have a “subcon¬ 
scious mind” that will do much for us without any effort on our part. 
I call my subconscious mind, “George.” I let “George” do it. It is 
all very simple. Fill your mind full of a subject — not with words, 
but with mental pictures. The words will take care of themselves. 
If you want a piece of pie, you don’t rehearse and commit to memory 
your request. You say: “Gi’me some pie,” and the pie comes. In 
the same way, if I am to speak on Chinese poetry, I do not worry. 
I open the door into my Chinese poetry shop and “George” does the 
rest. 

Use of the Extempore Method by Great Speakers. The method 
here presented is one that has been used by many great speakers. 
We have already seen how Beecher extemporized all his ser¬ 
mons in his famous Brooklyn church and probably produced 
the finest and most finished products ever wrought by that 
method. His five speeches in England, delivered in 1863 to 
win English support for the Lincoln administration, give every 
evidence of having been in the main extemporized, and resulted 
in what is regarded as one of the greatest oratorical triumphs 
in history. 

Webster used to rehearse his speeches while fishing. The 
well-known passage from his Bunker Hill oration he would 
address to the more doughty fish as he pulled them in. “You 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 67 

have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has 
bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold 
this glorious day,” etc. Wendell Phillips would arrange the 
chairs in his father’s library in a semicircle and then proceed 
to address them. One day his mother said to him, “Wendell, 
don’t you get tired of talking to those chairs?” “No, I don’t 
get tired,” came the reply, “but I guess it must be hard on the 
chairs.” Lincoln rehearsed his speeches with great care, some 
of them almost to the point of memorizing, and although he 
never studied psychology, he soon discovered that it was a 
great advantage to practice aloud. Many more examples 
could be given, but these will do for our purpose. 

Not only have virtually all great speakers used this method, 
but they have all excelled in the extempore style of speaking. 
Lincoln was a great extemporizer. In his seven debates with 
Douglas, each one lasting three solid hours, there is hardly 
any repetition. When the same ground is covered in the dif¬ 
ferent debates, as it is more or less, the language used is dif¬ 
ferent on each occasion. There may be found a few instances in 
which the order of ideas is much the same and the sentences 
somewhat alike; but not many. This is the more remarkable 
when we remember that both Lincoln and Douglas delivered 
upwards of sixty speeches each in the memorable campaign. 
Douglas was even a more fluent extemporizer than Lincoln, 
and was a consummate master in debate. Webster was doubtless 
one of the greatest extemporizers of all time. His “Reply to 
Hayne” was given under circumstances which made it impos¬ 
sible for him to prepare it in advance. He was, of course, 
familiar with his ground, and in one sense, as he remarked, 
had been preparing that speech for twenty years. The lan¬ 
guage must have been almost wholly the product of the moment. 
Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Ingersoll, all 
excelled in this type of speaking. They practiced it all their 
lives, although at times both Phillips and Ingersoll used the 
memoriter method. 


68 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


It should be said that the speeches handed down to us by 
these men are not necessarily the speeches as they were deliv¬ 
ered. Speakers revise their utterances for publication, and 
sometimes it is hard to recognize the original in the copy. 
Some day you may take occasion to look over the original copy 
of Webster’s “Reply to HayneJ” as it was taken down when he 
gave it and as you will find it in the Boston Public Library. You 
may be astonished to find how different is the original from the 
speech as it was printed. Especially is this true of the pero¬ 
ration. 1 As actually given, it is far from being the finished 
product found in the printed speech, and as we are accustomed 
to hear it declaimed. This is not to say that the effect produced 
may not have been just as great. The whole speech was care¬ 
fully revised and written out for publication. 

Practice Makes Perfect. Nowhere is it more true than in 
extemporaneous speaking that practice makes perfect. If you 
have an ambition to become an accomplished speaker, make 
up your mind that it will require much diligent study and 
practice. Think how the young musician spends from one to 
three hours a day at the piano for ten or fifteen years before he 
becomes an accomplished pianist. Consider what one-tenth of 
such practice would do for you in speaking. Any one with 
talent who would so apply himself to improve his speech would 
become an accomplished speaker, and hardly a day would pass 
when he could not use this skill to great advantage. 

The following bit of advice should be heeded by the ambitious: 

Think. Think much. Think very much. 

Practice. Practice much. Practice very much. 

Speak. Speak much. Speak very much. 

The Memoriter Method. Let us now consider briefly the 
memoriter method of preparing speeches for presentation; 
namely, that of writing out the speech and memorizing the 
manuscript. This method is probably more widely used in 
1 Cf. page 75 of this volume. 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 69 

classes in speaking than we suspect, and it is to be admitted 
that it has certain advantages. It permits of more finished 
form than the extemporized type, and enables us to say with 
much greater precision what we want to say. But it is a heavy 
tax on the memory — in fact so great a tax that no memory 
can meet the demands made on it by this type of speech with¬ 
out, on occasion, breaking down under it. That is one of its 
dangers. We have all seen students on the floor proceeding 
smoothly and fluently with a speech, when all of a sudden their 
minds were blank, and they could not think of a single word 
to say. They were “off the track” and helpless until they 
could get back on it somewhere. The ensuing pauses under 
such circumstances are embarrassing to speaker and listeners 
alike. In class speeches, of course, they should not be so 
regarded, as the aim is practice and the perfection of methods. 
In public, these lapses are embarrassing and weigh heavily 
against this method as a general one. 

Another obvious disadvantage of the memoriter method is 
that it fosters an attitude of aloofness from the audience, and 
militates against spontaneity and close contact, which the ex¬ 
tempore method invites. It is possible, of course, to learn a 
speech so well and express it so effectively as to make the lan¬ 
guage seem spontaneous and out of the moment, but that 
rarely happens, and when it does happen, it means the expend¬ 
iture of greater time and effort than the extemporized method 
requires. The speaker who extemporizes is not bound by any 
set language. He can vary it and adapt it more or less to the 
needs of the occasion. It is very difficult, on the other hand, to 
break away from the memorized manuscript, and doubly diffi¬ 
cult to get back to the right place. 

This said, the fact remains that this method has its place, 
and some practice in it is proper in class work. When short 
speeches are to be made on rather formal occasions, the best 
method may be to write them out and memorize them. Speeches 
of introduction, presentation, welcome, farewell, are examples, 


70 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

as are the traditional school valedictory and salutatory ad¬ 
dresses. This method is almost universally used in speaking 
contests, where careful preparation and finished form are empha¬ 
sized; and usually it is necessary to employ it, even in long 
speeches, where precision and accuracy of statement are essen¬ 
tial. Wendell Phillips, during the antislavery crusade, on 
several occasions wrote out his speeches and committed them 
to memory. In the preface to the First Series of his speeches 
he says, “Four or five of them were delivered in such circum¬ 
stances as made it proper I should set down beforehand sub¬ 
stantially what I had to say.” He knew that every sentence 
he uttered would be closely scrutinized by a hostile public 
sentiment and a hostile press, and twisted and turned against 
him if he left any opening. Public lecturers, especially those 
who possess the gift of originality and whose lectures show 
literary form, write out their discourses and memorize them. 
This was true of many of Ingersoll’s public lectures, which are 
works of art. No one need suppose that the marvelous word 
painting which we find in his lectures, the lavish imagery and 
picturesque style, were the product of the moment. They 
show the careful work of the artist. Some of Bryan’s speeches 
show workmanship of a high order, revealing power and beauty 
wrought with painstaking care and genuine art. Many public 
lectures, of course, were delivered before hundreds of audiences 
and doubtless went through a sort of evolutionary process. 
They have been handed down to us, presumably, in their most 
finished form rather than as originally given. 

This method, then, has its place, and has its advantages, 
especially for certain occasions. Some practice in it may there¬ 
fore properly be given. It will have a tendency to correct some 
of the more obvious faults of the extempore method, such as 
lack of finish and precision. But for every speech prepared by 
this method, there should be several prepared by the extempore 
method. The latter affords the best mental training; it fosters 
the kind of speaking which people are called upon to do most 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


7 i 

often; it develops proficiency in thinking on one’s feet and a 
command of language and ideas to serve specific ends. Not 
the least of its merits is that it promotes an informal, personal, 
spontaneous, flexible, conversational style of speaking which 
for ordinary purposes is the most effective, and which repre¬ 
sents an ideal all speakers may well labor to attain. 

Reading from Manuscript. Many speeches are written out 
and read from manuscript. This method likewise is appropriate 
for certain occasions. Men who hold responsible public posi¬ 
tions, and who are supposed to speak with authority when they 
do speak, frequently use this method. The President of the 
United States and governors of states, among others, usually 
read what they wish to say, when they have important matters 
to communicate. They do this in part for their own protection 
to avoid misconstruction of statement, and also to save time. 
At the inauguration of a university president, most of the 
addresses are likely to be in manuscript form. Some who are 
accustomed to extemporizing will use that method. Scientific 
men frequently “read papers” at conventions. Here thought 
is primary, and accuracy of statement imperative. In less 
formal talks, the extempore method is also used. Some preach¬ 
ers, who emphasize matter rather than manner, use the manu¬ 
script method, and, be it said, with good effect. Where content 
of thought and accuracy of statement are of paramount impor¬ 
tance, the manuscript method is proper. 

Many persons have an inveterate prejudice against speeches 
read from manuscript. Personally, I do not share that preju¬ 
dice, and I would much rather hear a good speech well read 
from manuscript than a poor one extemporized. Much depends 
on how the speeches are read. Of pulpit speakers that I have 
been particularly interested in, I recall four who have used 
the manuscript method, either wholly or in large part. All of 
them spoke longer than is customary in churches. Three of 
them were exceedingly stimulating, and I was not conscious 
of any distraction of attention because they read from manu- 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


72 

script. We must admit that, while the extempore method 
should be the one method most extensively cultivated by young 
speakers, because it is the method most often used, it has some 
very decided limitations. One is that it is impossible to say as 
much with that method in an hour as with the manuscript 
method. Consummate geniuses like Henry Ward Beecher and 
Wendell Phillips can extemporize for an hour and say good 
things all the time, but very few men can. The extemporized 
speech is often a very thin product, like Douglas’ doctrine of 
popular rights, which Lincoln likened to soup made from boil¬ 
ing the shadow of a starved chicken. 

Everything depends on the speech situation. If the audience 
is educated and capable of assimilating solid discourses, there is 
much to be said for the manuscript method. If they prefer 
their mental and spiritual diet in more diluted form, the extem¬ 
pore method will serve. I recently heard a preacher who is 
said to draw large crowds every Sunday morning to his church. 
He is a pleasing and entertaining speaker, and at times there 
is the roar of a lion in his voice. All he said in an hour could be 
comfortably put into ten minutes without doing violence to a 
single second. It is plain that the people who go to hear him 
want a large measure of entertainment and are willing to accept 
a small measure of instruction. 

So far as I know, this method is not used in classes in public 
speaking. Occasionally, manuscripts of speeches are required, 
but they are seldom read in class. The method has some 
things to recommend it from the point of view of training. If 
it is used, it is imperative that a student learn to write as he 
speaks, and so get away from the written style, which as a rule 
is much heavier and more unwieldy than the speaking style. 
In working for definite effects this method lends itself to spe¬ 
cific and detailed criticism. Reading from manuscript occa¬ 
sionally would be excellent practice for students. It may be 
that teachers of speaking do not cultivate this method as much 
as it deserves. 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


73 

The Impromptu Speech. There remains the impromptu 
speech. We understand by this a speech without any special 
preparation. It goes without saying that not much time can 
be taken up in class work with unprepared speeches. It is 
excellent drill for a student to get up on his feet and speak to a 
definite point for five minutes or so, but he must expect to get 
that practice largely outside of class. It may be that occa¬ 
sionally, once a semester or so, a class may with profit be or¬ 
ganized into an assembly for the discussion of some pressing 
question of the day, and may engage in a running debate accord¬ 
ing to parliamentary rules. Drill in conducting a meeting and 
in parliamentary practice is valuable, as would be also the 
practice had in speaking. It is a question of how much time 
to give to it. 

If you are ambitious to become an influential speaker, you 
can do no better than to take advantage of every occasion that 
presents itself for speaking. Those occasions are constantly aris¬ 
ing in class meetings, public assemblies, church affairs, political 
rallies, and other gatherings. The person who takes advantage 
of these opportunities, and is even willing to make a fool of 
himself on occasion, is the one that in the long run will be 
heard from. If you are unexpectedly called upon to make a 
speech or give your opinion on a current question, it is a mis¬ 
take to spend time trying to make excuses. The audience 
understands the situation and does not expect too much. It is 
good practice in a situation like that to try to guide your 
thoughts into familiar channels, although what is said must 
obviously have some bearing on the subject in hand. Remarks 
made by other speakers frequently form a good starting point, 
and may suggest a train of thought to develop. If you can use 
a personal experience in point, or give a concrete example or 
two, the chances are that you will meet the situation and make 
good. When you speak, aim to say something. Mere glibness 
of tongue is not enough. It is in fact frequently a nuisance. 

Some of the best speeches on record, strange to say, have 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


74 

been made impromptu. Wendell Phillips’ famous “Lovejoy 
Speech” in Faneuil Hall, 1837, is an example. It is strange but 
true that this speech, made when Phillips was only twenty-six 
years of age, reveals a maturity of style and method that he 
never excelled in his fifty years on the platform. It is said that 
Ingersoll’s “Oration at a Child’s Grave” was impromptu, 
although it bears all the earmarks of careful preparation. 

In Conclusion. Do not neglect this most important step of 
preparing your speeches for delivery, and do not go about it 
aimlessly. Correct method will greatly promote your success 
as a speaker. That method is not necessarily the best that 
will enable you to make the best speeches with the least possible 
effort, to begin with. No one method is best for all occasions, 
and no one method is best, perhaps, for all speakers. Give 
the extempore method careful thought and a fair trial. It will 
probably serve you best on the largest number of occasions. 
Practice with this method means careful selection and organiza¬ 
tion of speech materials in advance, and going over these 
materials repeatedly, using definite language, and imagining 
yourself before the audience that you are to address. Remember 
that the kind of practice which most resembles the actual 
speech situation will be the most effective. Aim to enlist all 
the forms of memory — the muscular, auditory, visual. This 
means practicing aloud with appropriate action. As you pro¬ 
gress in your speaking, more and more may be left to the occa¬ 
sion, but it will be a safe rule to follow that few speeches are 
made without careful preparation both of materials and of 
presentation. 

EXERCISES 

1. Prepare a five- or ten-minute speech, aiming to use mostly personal 
experiences and other concrete materials. Make a simple outline, 
to arrange speech materials in the best order. Go over the ground 
a few times, but avoid memorizing any part of it word for word. 
Be as conversational as possible in presenting the speech. 

2. Choose from three to five subjects and prepare in advance such 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 75 

thoughts on each of them as you can. Then speak for three 
minutes in class on the subject selected by your instructor. Use 
the extempore method. 

3. Pair yourself with a classmate; choose a disputed proposition 
and prepare in advance to argue one side of it for four minutes in 
constructive argument and two minutes in rebuttal. Use the 
extempore method. 

4. Without preparation in advance, tell in two or three minutes what 
you are planning to do when you get out of college, and your 
reasons for choosing such a course. 


„ , READINGS 

Speeches 

“Lovejoy Speech,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. I). 

“ Eulogy on Wendell Phillips,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: I). 
“Tribute to William Lloyd Garrison,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, 
Vol. II). 

“Oration at a Child’s Grave,” by Robert Ingersoll {Ingersoll, Vol. 
XII). 

“Our Commission,” by David Lloyd George {Lindgren). 

“More Business in Government,” by Albert C. Ritchie {Lindgren). 

References 

Charles Henry Woolbert: Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 
1927), Chap. XVII. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XVII. 


CONCLUSION OF WEBSTER’S “REPLY TO HAYNE” 

This is the conclusion of Webster’s “Reply to Hayne” as it 
was copied from the stenographer’s notes and before it was 
revised by Webster for publication. The manuscript is in the 
Boston Public Library. Compare it with the published version. 

Sir, I am sorry to detain the senate so long. I have been drawn 
into this debate without the least premeditation. But I do not wish 
to leave it, even now, without stating that the question upon which I 
have been this morning addressing the senate is one of deep and vital 



THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


76 

importance to the people of the United States. I profess, through 
the whole of my little professional career, to have had mainly in view 
the prosperity and glory of the country, and the union of the states. I 
have felt that I have no wish to look beyond the union to see what 
might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not made the in¬ 
quiry whether Liberty herself would survive the rupture of its bonds. 
I believe that all that we have in prosperity and safety at home, and 
in consideration and dignity abroad, has its source in that copious 
fountain of national, social, and personal felicity, the union of the 
states. I profess myself a devotee to this object of my admiration 
and profound veneration. 

While the union lasts, we have a great prospect of prosperity 
before us; and when this union breaks up, there is nothing in prospect 
for me to look at but what I regard with horror and despair. God 
forbid, yes sir, God forbid, that I should live to see this cord broken, 
to behold that state of things which carries us back to disunion, 
calamity, and civil war! When my eyes shall be turned for the last 
time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining bright upon 
my united, free, and happy country. I hope I shall not live to see 
his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of 
this once glorious union. I hope that I may not see the flag of my 
country, with its stars separated or obliterated, torn by commotion, 
smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the stand¬ 
ard raised of separate state rights, star against star, and stripe against 
stripe; but that the flag of the union may keep its stars and its stripes 
corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not 
see written as its motto, First liberty, and then union. I hope I 
shall see no such delusive and deluded motto on the flag of that 
country. I hope to see spread all over it, blazing in letters of light, 
and proudly floating over land and sea, that other sentiment, dear 
to my heart, Union and liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable. 

CONCLUSION OF “REPLY TO HAYNE” AS REVISED 
FOR PUBLICATION 

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to 
the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am con¬ 
scious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was 


PREPARATION FOR DELIVERY 


77 

drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation such as is suited 
to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a 
subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to 
suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, 
even now, persuade myself to relinquish it without expressing once 
more my deep conviction that since it respects nothing less than 
the Union of the States, it is of most vital and essential importance 
to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career, hitherto, to 
have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole 
country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. 

It is to that Union we owe our safety at home and our consideration 
and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted 
for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we 
reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of 
adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, 
prostrate commerce and ruined credit. Under its benign influence, 
these great interests immediately awoke us as from the dead and 
sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has 
teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, al¬ 
though our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our 
population spread further and further, they have not outrun its 
protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain 
of national, social and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, 
sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark 
recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving 
liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. 
I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion 
to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the 
abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs 
of this Government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on con¬ 
sidering not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable 
might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and 
destroyed. . . . While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, 
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. 
Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in 
my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that, on my 
vision, never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall 
be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not 


78 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once 
glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a 
land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! 
Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous 
ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in 
their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single 
star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory 
as, “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and 
folly, “Liberty first and union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread 
all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under 
the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American 
heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever one and inseparable! 


CHAPTER VII 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 

Set it down as the first principle of speech composition that 
any effort to make a speech out of nothing as raw material will 
result in failure. No one can make a good speech out of wind. 
It has been tried hundreds of times, and always with the same 
disastrous results. 

Nature of Good Speech Materials. In order to make good 
speeches, you must have specific and concrete speech materials. 
You cannot deal in generalities, abstractions, or long reasoning 
processes. If you do, nobody will listen to you for any length 
of time. The reason is that mental processes of that order are 
usually hard to follow, and soon tire the minds of listeners, 
causing them to lose attention. If you want to hold the atten¬ 
tion of your audience and to accomplish something with them, 
you must deal with facts, figures, statistics, examples, experi¬ 
ences, persons, incidents, quotations, illustrations, figures of 
speech, anecdotes, fables, parables — in short, you must speak in 
terms of things that can be seen and heard, and otherwise 
sensed. 

It is not easy to give a classification of speech materials, or 
forms of support, without having some overlapping, but even 
an imperfect one is helpful, and will serve, at least, to center 
your attention on some definite things. 

First of all, you must, of course, have ideas; vital ideas that 
grip the audience and generate moral earnestness in yourself. 
You must have a definite purpose and definite propositions in 
support of that purpose. Some examples of that have already 
been given. Then, when you come to support, or “ drive home,” 
the main ideas of your speech, you will need definite forms of 

79 


80 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

support. That is what we mean, broadly speaking, by speech 
materials. 

Propositions and Their Support. In your effort to master the 
art of speaking, you will soon discover that your chief problem 
is in giving propositions , or assertions , adequate support. Not 
all statements in a speech need to be supported; many of them 
will be taken for granted and accepted by your audience on 
your own say-so. Statements that involve matters of common 
knowledge do not have to be supported. Some statements you 
may want to make on your own authority and let them go for 
what they are worth. They will be rated at what your opinion 
on that question is worth. It may be worth something, or it 
may not be worth anything, depending on your knowledge 
and fairness of attitude on the subject. No one can tell you 
what statements will or will not be accepted by any particular 
audience. It is for you to use your judgment. 

To determine what statements will pass without support , what 
statements will not , what kind of support to give each , and how 
much , is certainly one of the major problems in speaking. The 
careful speaker will be constantly on the alert about this, and 
will ask himself questions accordingly. You may state an 
actual fact — as, for example, that the prison population of 
your state is larger today than it ever was before if that is a 
fact; but your audience may not accept it without satisfactory 
authority. Nothing is fact to an audience but what it chooses 
to accept; everything else is opinion , and as such must be 
established in a manner satisfactory to them. The question 
always is: What will satisfy my audience on this? What is 
needed to make them understand, believe, feel, act, as the case 
may be? 

Classification of Forms of Support. Phillips, in his Efective 
Speaking, gives four forms of support: Restatement, General 
Illustration, Specific Instance, Testimony. These are good so 
far as they go, and worth remembering. We shall use a some¬ 
what different classification. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


81 


i. Facts , Figures , Statistics. Not all figures are statistics, 
nor do we necessarily use either when we give facts, although 
I we frequently do. When we say that the price of wheat is now 
j the lowest in twenty years, assuming that it is, we state a fact. 

If we follow that up and say that the price of wheat is now 
' fifty-two cents a bushel, or whatever it may be, we state a 
! fact and give some figures. If we offer a table on the price of 
wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade for the last twenty years, 
we are giving statistics. 

By statistics we usually mean a compilation of figures in some 
|| field of knowledge relating to human welfare, such as health, 
>1 politics, economics, education. These are often valuable ma¬ 
terials in a speech, and important forms of support. In using 
them, be on your guard against making them too involved for 
your audience to understand. Present them in as simple form 
as possible. Aim to have them up-to-date and accurate, and 
quote original sources whenever possible. 

When you are dealing with facts and figures, be as specific 
as you think is necessary to get the best effect. To say that we 
spend millions of dollars in chewing gum annually is not nearly 
so effective as to say that we spend one hundred million dollars 
— or whatever the figure is — in round numbers. To say that 
thousands of people are killed by automobiles every year is not 
so effective as to say that over 35,000 people are annually killed 
in that way. To say that there is corruption in a certain city 
government does not mean much until you show what the 
corruption consists of, how extensive it is, so far as that can be 
determined, and then give concrete examples of proved cor¬ 
ruption. 

In reading large numbers, give only the larger units. If the 
farm income in the United States for a certain year was $9,942,- 
678,234, it is a mistake to read more than three or four of the 
figures. If we are dealing in billions, we are not interested in 
the thousands; and if we are dealing in millions, we are not 
interested in the hundreds, and only mildly in the thousands. 







82 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Give enough figures to make the reading reasonably accurate, 
and that is sufficient. If you read the small ones, we forget 
about the big ones in the meantime. 

2. Restatement , Repetition . By restatement we mean express¬ 
ing the same thought in somewhat different language. By 
repetition , we mean expressing the same thought in identical 
language. Restatement may be used for clearness, or for im¬ 
pressiveness, or for any other end of speech. A dictionary 
restates the meaning of a word in simple language to make it 
clearer. We often do the same for an idea and for the same 
reason. We may also make an idea impressive by restatement. 

There is much restatement in the following paragraph from 
Elihu Root’s speech at the Union League Club, New York 
City, February 13, 1925. 

I think that I would like to say a few words to you all about the 
view that I take of the progress of our country during this long 
period. Special incidents are not of so much consequence. . . . 
They all pass and as we look back at them, they all seek a level; 
but the important thing, the all important thing, is the tendency. 
In what direction have we been going? Not whether the country 
was right or wrong on this question or that question, not so much 
whether our legislative bodies are doing their work as they ought 
to now, not so much whether our laws are being executed as well 
as they ought to be, but which way is the country going? What is 
the aggregate and permanent effect upon the maintenance and the 
development and the progress of free self-government, for the main¬ 
tenance of liberty and justice? Are we going up or down? Is the ex¬ 
periment gaining ground or is it losing it? Have all the services and 
the sacrifices and all the good and brave things done been built 
into a structure that will last, or have they been wasted? 1 

In making transitions from one point to another, we often 
refer to what has been said, and clinch it either by repeating 
the original proposition as given, or by restating the substance 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), 
p. 262. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


83 

of our idea in different language. Summaries at the end of 
speeches, or important divisions of them, are usually given by 
repeating the topic sentences or propositions we started out to 
support. This is not necessarily the best method of summariz¬ 
ing. In fact, it is a very much abused one, especially in debates. 
You will do well to be on your guard against too many repeti¬ 
tions of statements in identical language. It is usually better 
to search for freshness of phrase and a greater forcefulness of 
language than was originally used. Work for variety of state¬ 
ment and climax in emphasis. 

3. The General Example. As a form of support, the general 
example occupies a sort of middle ground between the state¬ 
ment, or assertion, and the concrete example. It includes mem¬ 
bers of a class. 

Statement: Our world today has many fine artists. 

General Examples: We have many fine singers, violinists, orches¬ 
tra leaders. 

Concrete Examples: We have such artists as John McCormack, 
Lawrence Tibbett, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Eugene Ormandy, 
and Leopold Stokowski. 

Carrie Chapman Catt gets a good effect by the use of the 
general example in the following paragraph, which is also a 
good example of cumulation . 1 

As men have ever been their own worst enemies, so women have 
been a potent power to retard the advancement of their own sex. 
It was women as well as men who were scandalized at the idea of 
taxing the public to maintain public schools for the education of 
“She’s.” It was women who regarded the high school, the college 
and the university education as indelicate for women. It was women 
who refused to speak to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman 
physician. It was women who cried shame at Susan B. Anthony 
when she arose to address a teacher’s convention in the state of 
New York. It was women who cried “served them right” when 
several of the leading newspapers of the country editorially stig- 

1 Cf. page 90. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


84 

matized the first women who attempted to speak in public as “she 
hyenas.” It was wives, when the first petition to the legislature 
for property rights for women was circulated, who refused to sign 
it upon the ground that the control of property was the just privilege 
of husbands. 1 

4. The Specific Example. This is what its name implies and 
does not need much explanation. It is an actual instance of 
the general idea that is being supported. It is a matter of 
names, dates, places, actual happenings. It may be the mere 
mention of a name, or it may require a lengthy narration or 
description. We may say that the United States has had 
many great senators, and name as examples of what we mean 
Charles Sumner and Daniel Webster. We say that many au¬ 
tomobile accidents can be prevented, and then proceed to des¬ 
cribe — give examples of — some that we have observed. That 
may require several minutes. J. B. Gordon, in his lecture, “The 
Last Days of the Confederacy,” takes several pages to des¬ 
cribe, or relate, an incident that happened to him in the Civil 
War. Sometimes we may describe a situation at some length 
and then proceed to draw inferences from this one situation. 

Russell H. Conwell, in his “Acres of Diamonds,” is trying to 
impress on his hearers the idea that one way to be successful 
in business is to take a genuine interest in your patrons and to 
study their wants with a view to satisfying those wants. Note 
what effect he gets with an example. 

When I was young, my father kept a country store, and once in a 
while he left me in charge of that store. Fortunately for him it was 
not often. {Laughter.) When I had it in my charge a man came in 
the store door and said: — 

“Do you keep jack-knives?” 

“No, we don’t keep jack-knives.” I went off and whistled a tune, 
and what did I care for that man? Then another man would come 
in and say: — 

“Do you keep jack-knives?” “No, we don’t keep jack-knives.” 

1 Independent , Oct. n, 1915, Vol. 84, p. 58. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 85 

Then I went off and whistled another tune, and what did I care for 
that man? 

Then another man would come in the same door and say: “Do 
you keep jack-knives?” 

“No, we don’t keep jack-knives. Do you suppose we are keeping 
this store just for the purpose of supplying the whole neighborhood 
with jack-knives? ” 

Do you carry on your business like that? Do you ask what was 
the difficulty with it? The difficulty was that I had not then learned 
that the foundation principles of business success and the foundation 
principles of Christianity, itself, are both the same. It is the whole 
of every man’s life to be doing for his fellow men. And he who can 
do the most to help his fellow men, is entitled to the greatest reward 
himself. Not only so saith God’s holy book, but also saith every 
man’s business common sense. If I had been carrying on my father’s 
store on a Christian plan, or on a plan that leads to success, I would 
have had a jack-knife for the third man when he called for it. 

For speaking purposes, at least, the specific example is the 
most important of all forms of support. It is a good rule never 
to make a general statement without giving an example of 
what you mean. For informative purposes, to offer a specific 
example in support of an obscure statement is frequently to 
flood it with light. A good specific example is much like a sky¬ 
rocket that explodes in the air and illuminates the whole 
heavens. For appealing to the feelings, a single well-chosen 
example, as we shall see later, will do more than a long string 
of generalities and abstractions. For winning belief, it is a 
very valuable form of support, although it has limitations that 
should be recognized. If, for example, you are trying to show 
that liquor legislation cannot be enforced, a few examples of 
violation mean very little as evidential support. It should be 
said, however, that a few examples usually produce a psycho¬ 
logical effect on your audience that is out of proportion to 
their real evidential value. 

5. Testimony. Next to being able to say something well 
ourselves is the ability to quote some one who has said it well. 


86 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


There is hardly a field of human thought these days that has 
not been explored; hardly an idea that some one else has not 
already expressed probably better than we can express it. 
Hence the value of testimony, provided we can find appro¬ 
priate testimony to give. 

We may distinguish roughly three kinds of testimony, which 
is always in the form of quotations: 

(1) Testimony as to facts. 

(2) Testimony of authorities, or expert testimony. 

(3) The literary quotation. 

(1) Testimony as to facts. The opportunity for any one to 
gather first-hand information on different questions through 
observation and experience is necessarily very limited. As 
Walter Lippmann has so well put it: “Man is no Aristotelian 
God contemplating all existence at a glance.” So we have to 
depend very largely on information that we get from others. 
Most of our information we get from reading; some occasionally 
from letters or interviews. When a man tells us about an 
accident he has seen, or when we consult the census reports in 
regard to the population of a certain city, or a newspaper about 
market prices, we are getting testimony as to facts. The first 
is oral; the other two are written. 

(2) Authority, or expert opinion. When we quote Professor 
Manley Hudson on the World Court, or a soil expert on what 
crops to plant, we are quoting the opinion of an authority. 

In quoting authorities, keep in mind two things at least. 
First, be sure that the person quoted has a right to speak on the 
question — is in fact an authority on it. Satisfy yourself that 
he has had unusual opportunity to study the question and is a 
man of recognized standing. Not all writers are authorities on 
the questions they write about. Much less are all speakers 
authorities on the questions they talk about. The fact that a 
man is in the public eye does not make him an authority on all 
subjects. Only special study and recognized ability make a man 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 87 

an authority. Be sure your authorities meet these require¬ 
ments. 

The second point to note about an authority is that he shall 
be unprejudiced. Almost everybody has some slant or bias on 
I most questions, and it is likely to creep out in his utterances 
and writings. Sometimes this bias is very pronounced and 
, may render an opinion almost worthless. It is very often 
j difficult to distinguish the propagandist from the seeker after 
truth. The testimony of a salesman as to the merits of his 
goods has usually to be discounted. The testimony of the 
representatives of a manufacturing corporation as to the need 
of a higher tariff must be scrutinized carefully. These have 
their own interests to serve. On the other hand, the testimony 
of a crop expert on the adaptation of soil to certain crops is likely 
to be fair and unprejudiced. He has no interest in the matter 
except to tell the truth. If a man has a personal interest in 
maintaining certain views and holding certain opinions, his 
testimony on such questions is likely to be of little value. 

Always keep in mind that your authority is no better than 
you succeed in making your audience believe he is. It is not 
enough that a man shall be an authority. You must make your 
audience see that he is one. Simply quoting an unknown 
writer to an audience, without impressing them with his knowl¬ 
edge of his subject and his right to speak on it, has next to no 
j effect. If your writer is well known and likely to be accepted, 
good. If not, be sure to make him known and acceptable be¬ 
fore you quote him. So far as getting results in speaking is 
concerned, no authority is any better than your audience thinks 
he is. 

(3) The literary quotation. By this we mean a quotation 
from literature rather than from writers on public questions. 
It may be a line only, or it may be a stanza or two of poetry. 
James T. Fields, in his lecture, “Masters of the Situation,” 
suggests that one of the best lessons a true American can 
practice is that expressed so feelingly by Wordsworth: 




88 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Never to blend our pleasure or our pride, 

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 

The literary quotation is at once a form of support and an em¬ 
bellishment to your speech. The chief problem is to find the 
appropriate quotation. You will find it a most commendable 
practice to accustom yourself to making use of your knowledge 
of literature and to ground your speaking in the best thought 
of the ages. An occasional quotation in a speech adds spice 
and variety. It is possible to overdo this, of course, and by 
overdoing, make speaking pedantic. You will probably be in 
no danger of that for the present. George W. Curtis, Wendell 
Phillips, Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, and others of our 
best speakers used quotations of this kind in their speeches. 
Lincoln did not use quotations lavishly by any means, but on 
occasion he quoted the Bible and Shakespeare with excellent 
effect. It is only a slight extravagance of language to say that 
a Biblical quotation — “A house divided against itself cannot 
stand” — used in his “Springfield Speech” sent Lincoln to the 
White House. 

6 . Reasoning from Facts and Authorities. Another form of 
support much used in argumentative speeches, and more or 
less in all types, is reasoning — inferences from facts and opin¬ 
ions. To say that the study of Latin will give one a command 
of English not otherwise to be had is to reason from cause to 
effect. If we cite examples of several Latin students who later 
showed a ready knowledge of English and infer from these 
examples that all students of Latin have a better command of 
English than those who do not know Latin, we reason by means 
of a generalization. If we find minnows in the milk and 
infer that the milk has been mixed with water, we reason from 
effect to cause. If we compare two things and find them resem¬ 
bling each other in certain essential particulars, and infer from 
this that they will resemble each other in certain other unknown 
particulars, we reason by analogy. If, for example, we infer that 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


89 

a labor party in the United States will be successful because 
the English Labor Party has been successful, our inference is 
from analogy. 

The different forms of argument based on reasoning are 
dealt with more fully in Chapter XV, “The Argumentative 
Speech.” 

7. The Hypothetical Case. This is an imagined example or 
situation suggested to explain facts and draw conclusions vividly. 
We use it in conversation almost every day of our lives, and 
speakers find it equally advantageous to use it in public address. 
We say, for example, “Suppose a man forms the habit of driv¬ 
ing his car recklessly; the chances are good that some day he 
will break his neck.” This is the simplest form. Like other 
examples, the hypothetical case may have a string of attendant 
circumstances to suit the purpose of the speaker. Note the 
following from Wendell Phillips’ “Tribute to Lincoln”: 

He caught the first notes of the coming jubilee, and heard his own 
name in every one. Who among living men may not envy him? 
i Suppose that when a boy, as he floated on the slow current of the 
Mississippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some angel 
had lifted the curtain and shown him that in the prime of his man¬ 
hood he should see this proud empire rocked to its foundations in 
the effort to break those chains; should himself marshal the hosts 
of the Almighty in the grandest and holiest war that Christendom 
ever knew, and deal with half-reluctant hand that thunderbolt of 
justice which would smite the foul system to the dust, then die, 
leaving a name immortal in the sturdy pride of our race, and the 
undying gratitude of another, — would any credulity, however san¬ 
guine, any enthusiasm, however fervid, have enabled him to believe 
it? Fortunate man! He has lived to do it! 

Sometimes the supposed case is made to stand for a class. 
If it is, its effect may depend in large measure on its being 
made truly representative of the class. The case must be 
fairly stated. 

The following from Thomas Carlyle will be regarded as 




9 ° 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


effective or not, depending on whether we think it is typical of 
how wars originate and proceed. 

What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and 
upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell 
and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five 
hundred souls. From these, by certain “natural enemies” of the 
French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say 
thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled 
and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed 
them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one 
can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can 
stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much 
weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and 
shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or 
say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. 

And now to the same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar 
French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; 
till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual 
juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun 
in his hand. 

Straightway the word “Fire!” is given, and they blow the souls 
out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the 
world has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anon shed 
tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not 
the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest stran¬ 
gers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by 
commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? 
Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting 
one another had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot. 1 

8. Cumulation. Phillips, in his Effective Speaking , stresses 
the effectiveness of cumulative support for assertions or propo¬ 
sitions in a speech. There is no doubt that this is good psy¬ 
chology, if used with discretion. Robert Ingersoll is the one 
conspicuous master in the use of this speaking device. He 
uses it freely, more or less in every lecture. Other speakers use 
it occasionally. 

1 Sartor Resartus. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


9 i 

Cumulation is not merely a series of statements in support of 
a proposition; it is a series of statements usually of the same 
class. The forms of support most often used for cumulative 
effect are the general and specific example. Testimony may 
also be used, but is not used nearly so often. The best effect 
seems to be had by using the same form of support throughout 
— as, for instance, the general example or the specific example. 
It is possible to use effectively first one and then the other in 
support of the same proposition, but more often it will be 
found that sticking to the same one will give the best effect. 
To get cumulative effect, it is necessary that the statements 
be not too long, or the cumulative effect will be lost. Cumu¬ 
lative support should move rapidly. Note the effect of the 
following from Ingersoll’s lecture, “Farming in Illinois.” 

The old way of farming was a great mistake. It was all labor and 
weariness and vexation of spirit. The crops were destroyed by 
wandering herds, or they were put in too late, or too early, or they 
were blown down, or caught by the frost, or devoured by bugs, 
or stung by flies, or eaten by worms, or carried away by birds, or 
dug up by gophers, or washed away by floods, or dried up by the 
sun, or rotted in the stack, or heated in the crib, or they all run to 
vines, or tops, or straw, or smut, or cobs. And when in spite of all 
these accidents that lie in wait between the plow and the reaper, 
they did succeed in raising a good crop and a high price was offered, 
then the roads would be impassable. And when the roads got 
good, then the prices went down. Everything worked together 
for evil. 

Henry W. Grady gets a cumulative effect with specific in¬ 
stances in the following extract from his lecture, “The Farmer 
and the Cities.” 

Character, like corn, is dug from the soil. A contented rural popu¬ 
lation is not only the measure of our strength, and an assurance of 
its peace when there should be peace, and a resource of courage when 
peace would be cowardice — but it is the nursery of the great leaders 
who have made this country what it is. Washington was born and 




THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


92 

lived in the country. Jefferson was a farmer. Henry Clay rode his 
horse to the mill in the slashes. Webster dreamed amid the soli¬ 
tude of Marshfield. Lincoln was a rail splitter. Our own Hill 
walked between the handles of the plow. Brown peddled barefoot 
the product of his patch. Stephens found immortality under the 
trees of his country home. Toombs and Cobb and Calhoun were 
country gentlemen, and afar from the cities’ maddening strife estab¬ 
lished that greatness that is the heritage of their people. The cities 
produce very few leaders. Almost every man in our history formed 
his character in the leisure and deliberation of village or country 
life, and drew his strength from the dugs of the earth even as a child 
draws his from his mother’s breast. 

For impressive or emotional effect, the general example is 
probably the most effective form of cumulative support. Inger- 
soll uses this method extensively, and gets with it some of his 
most eloquent effects. His “Vision of War” is a cumulation 
made up of general examples. The conclusion to his lecture on 
Shakespeare is also an impressive cumulation made up largely 
of general examples. The word painting, rhythm, and allitera¬ 
tion add greatly to the effect. 

He lived the life of all. He was a citizen of Athens in the days of 
Pericles. He listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, 
and sat upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard the multi¬ 
tudinous laughter of the sea. He saw Socrates thrust the spear of 
question through the shield and heart of falsehood. He was present 
when the great man drank hemlock, and met the night of death, 
tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the peripatetic 
philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched 
Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. 

He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. 
He knew the very thought that wrought the form and features of 
the Sphinx. He heard great Memnon’s morning song when marble 
lips were smitten by the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed 
and waiting dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of an¬ 
other life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts — the children 
born of long delay. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


93 

He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Caesar with 
his legions in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and 
watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned 
kings, the captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He 
heard the shout that shook the Coliseum’s roofless walls, when from 
the reeling gladiator’s hand the short sword fell, while from his 
bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. 

In Conclusion. Good speeches need good speech materials, 
just as well-constructed buildings need good building materials. 
You cannot build a home out of blue sky; you cannot make a 
speech out of wind. A speech is a series of propositions and 
their support. A good speech is made up of vital ideas and 
adequate support for those ideas. As to what are vital ideas 
in any subject, that must be left to the speaker’s invention and 
judgment. We are dealing here primarily with the problem of 
giving ideas proper support. Unsupported assertion is the vice 
of most speeches. Ideas in a speech must not only be clearly 
conceived and formulated; they must be adequately supported. 
The forms of support must be specific and concrete. The prin¬ 
cipal forms are given in this chapter and the next. A good 
speech will have facts, figures, general and specific examples, 
testimony, considerable repetition or restatement, very likely 
some hypothetical cases, logical argument or reasoning, an occa¬ 
sional cumulation, and a wealth of illustrations. The importance 
of illustrations will be considered in the next chapter. If you 
will check the content of your speech by these criteria, you 
will probably find that you will have something to say, and 
what you say will hold attention. Those are the big things in 
a speech: to have something to say, and to say it in such a 
way that people will listen to you. Vital and concrete speech 
materials are indispensable to the attainment of those ends. 


94 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


EXERCISES 

1. Prepare a ten-minute speech, aiming to use specific and concrete 
speech materials. Avoid too many broad statements and gener¬ 
alities. Stay on the ground and not in the clouds. Deal with 
human experiences. 

2. Study critically the speech of James T. Field, “Masters of the 
Situation,” or some other speech that interests you. 

a. List all the forms of support you find on the basis of the 
classification given in this chapter. 

b. Which forms predominate? 

c. Which in your opinion are the most effective? 

d. How would you characterize the style of the lecture? Is it 
abstract or concrete? Simple or involved? Etc. 

e. Does the lecture grip? Why or why not? 

3. Support the following ideas by the use of facts, statistics, and 

authorities: 

a. Crime is increasing. 

b. The purchasing power of the farmer is too low. 

c. Prohibition decreased drunkenness. 

d. The national income should be more fairly distributed. 

e. The birth rate is decreasing. 

4. Support the following propositions by examples and illustrations: 

a. Courtesy pays. 

b. Selfishness is an ugly trait. 

c. Many men have achieved great things in old age. 

d. We learn through experience. 


Speeches 


READINGS 


“Masters of the Situation,” by James T. Fields {Mod.El.: I, Vol. V). 
“The Reign of the Common People,” by Henry Ward Beecher 
(Vol. XIII). 

“Substance and Show,”by Thomas Starr King {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 
“Social Responsibilities,” by John B. Gough (Vol. XIII). 
“Commencement Address,” by William Lyon Phelps {Lindgren). 
“Get Facts: Look Far: Think Through,” by William C. Redfield. 1 


1 This speech appears on page 413 of this volume. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT 


95 


References 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chaps. VIII- 
XVI. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. X. 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements 
of Speech (1926), Chap. XIII. 

Arleigh Boyd Williamson: Speaking in Public (1929), Chaps. XII- 
XIII. 


CHAPTER VIII 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 

One picture is worth ten thousand words. — Chinese Proverb 

All of us use the word “illustration” freely, and still if some 
one were to ask us to define it, or to tell what it includes, it 
might bother us to do so. The word is derived from the Latin 
verb illustrare and means “to light up,” “to brighten.” So 
Beecher defines an illustration as “a window that lets in 
light.” That is a very good definition, so far as it goes; only 
an illustration frequently lets in heat as well as light — that is, 
it may appeal to the feelings as well as to the intellect. A 
speech without illustrations is like a house without windows — 
mentally stifling and smothering. 

Illustrations and Reference to Experience. When you come 
to study the literature of public address, especially popular 
oratory as distinguished from parliamentary or congressional 
oratory, you will be surprised to find how extensively illustra¬ 
tions are used. Many speeches have just about enough frame¬ 
work of logic to hold the illustrations and examples together. 
An illustration usually embodies a vivid experience that is 
familiar to all, and is therefore the very best means of driving 
truth home. All great speakers have been masters in the use of 
illustrations. 

In his lectures to Yale students, Henry Ward Beecher offered 
the following explanation of the value of illustrations: 

The mode in which we learn a new thing is by its being likened to 
something which we already know. This is the principle underlying 
all true illustrations. They are a kind of covert analogy, or likening 
of one thing to another, so that obscure things become plain, being 

96 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 97 

represented pictorially or otherwise by things that are not obscure 
and that we are familiar with. So, then, the groundwork of all 
illustration is the familiarity of your audience with the thing on which 
the illustration stands. Now and then it will be proper to lay down 
and explain with particularity the fact out of which an illustration 
is to grow, and then to make the fact illustrate the truth to be made 
clear. The speaker will, for instance, undertake to explain the 
isochronism of a watch, and having done this so that the audience 
will understand it, he may employ the watch in that regard as an 
illustration. But, generally, the subject-matter of an illustration 
should be that which is familiar to the minds of those to whom you 
are speaking. 

An illustration is never to be a mere ornament, although its being 
ornamental is no objection to it. If a man’s sermon is like a boiled 
ham, and the illustrations are like cloves stuck in it afterward to 
make it look a little better, or like a bit of celery or other garnish 
laid around on the edge for the mere delectation of the eye, it is 
contemptible. But if you have a real and good use for an illustration, 
that has a real and direct relation to the end you are seeking, then 
it may be ornamental, and no fault should be found with it for that. 

Kinds of Illustrations. As to what form an illustration may 
take, we may not all be agreed. We may suggest the following 
forms, all of which may be used to advantage in making 
speeches: the simile; the metaphor; the analogy; the anecdote 
or story; the fable; the parable. All illustrations involve 
comparisons. 

1. The Simile. This figure of speech, as you know from your 
study of rhetoric, is an expressed comparison in one or more 
respects between objects or ideas that are essentially unlike. 
It is one of the most familiar figures in literature, although in 
speaking, it is not used nearly so much as the metaphor. The 
reason is that it does not possess the compressed and driving 
force of the metaphor, and is therefore not so well adapted to 
trenchant and vigorous expression such as speaking requires. 
It is a very useful form of illustration, however, and more or 
less freely used by many good speakers. Edmund Burke was 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


98 

known for his picturesque similes. Beecher was a master in 
driving home truth by means of this figure of speech. Ingersoll 
makes free use of the simile, often with striking beauty of 
effect. You will find a dozen or a score in many of Phillips’ 
speeches. Some of Lincoln’s homely illustrations are in the form 
of similes. 

The simile is effective for illustrative purposes when it 
embodies well-known and familiar objects of thought. The 
degree of effectiveness will depend on the immediate perception 
of likeness between the ideas or things compared. The simile 
is usually a figure of adornment and gives charm to style. We 
use the simile in conversation occasionally, and should cultivate 
its use in public address, which is merely a somewhat more 
formal and dignified type of speech. 

When Edward Everett wanted to bring vividly before a 
certain Indian chief the influence of Washington, he said of the 
great Virginian: “He is gone to the world of spirits, but his 
words have made a very deep print in our hearts, like the 
steps of a great buffalo on the soft clay of the prairie.” 

Students of speech may well ponder the following simile 
from Aristotle: “It is improper to warp the judgment of a 
juror by exciting him to anger or jealousy, or compassion, as 
this is like making the rule which one is going to use, crooked.” 

Lincoln, in a letter to General Hooker, advised against hav¬ 
ing his army cross a river at a certain time “lest it might be 
caught in the position of an ox half jumped over a fence, liable 
to be attacked both front and rear and with no fair chance to 
gore in one direction or kick in the other.” 

Beecher said in the opening of his “ Glasgow Speech,” “ I came 
to this land which, though small, is as full of memories as the 
heaven is of stars.” 

2. The Metaphor . The metaphor is “the staple figure of 
oratory,” more extensively used than any other. Always it is 
an implied comparison between two objects or ideas, and always 
the likeness observed is between things that are essentially 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 99 

unlike. You will find as many as one hundred metaphorical 
expressions in some of the speeches of Ingersoll, Starr King, 
Phillips, and Beecher. 

There is nothing mysterious about a metaphor. We use it in 
conversation every hour of the day. When you refer to a girl 
friend as a “peach,” a bright pupil as a “shark,” a course of 
study as a “snap,” a bad defeat of your football team as their 
“Waterloo,” you are talking in metaphorical language. A met¬ 
aphor is a kind of short cut in giving information and expressing 
feeling. “It is with words as with sunbeams: the more they 
are condensed, the brighter they burn.” You use the word 
“peach” to describe certain likable qualities in your girl friend 
that could not be described so simply and effectively in any 
other way. A “ shark ” has great capacity for devouring things, 
and so we apply that term to a pupil who has capacity for 
devouring knowledge. When you speak of a football team as 
having met their “Waterloo,” you convey the idea of a crushing 
defeat, such as Napoleon met on the famous battle field. In 
no other way can it be done so simply and effectively. 

Fisher Ames, one of our statesmen of the Revolutionary 
period, used the following metaphor to contrast in certain as¬ 
pects monarchy and democracy as forms of government. 

A monarchy is a man of war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless 
when under full sail; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. 
Our republic is a raft hard to steer, and your feet always wet, but 
nothing can sink her. 

Here are some others: 

Greece flashes today the torch which guilds yet the mountain 
peaks of the old world. — Wendell Phillips 

For other men we walk backward and throw over their memory 
the mantle of charity and excuse, saying, “Remember the tempta¬ 
tion and the age.” But Vane’s ermine has no stain. 

— Wendell Phillips 


IOO 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


He (Shakespeare) knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage 
joys of hatred and revenge. He heard the hiss of envy’s snakes and 
watched the eagles of ambition soar. There was no hope that did 
not put its star above his head, no fear he had not felt, no joy that 
had not shed its sunshine on his face. — Robert Ingersoll 

An unsold surplus is the blood clot in the heart of business. 

— Albert J. Beveridge 

Sometimes the metaphor may be sustained like the following: 

To them [men of former ages] life was an Alpine country; it had 
its great mountains towering skyward, its dark and bottomless 
abysses, its caverns haunted by unknown horrors, its mighty glaciers, 
and its awful precipices; it was a chaos of sublimity and horror, of 
grandeur and desolation. Now what have we done? We have leveled, 
smoothed, graded this wild and barbarous country, we have torn 
down every mountain, we have filled up every chasm, we have re¬ 
duced it to a perfectly even lawn, an admirably trimmed and 
exquisitely decorated park, infinitely more comfortable and infinitely 
less grand. Life has lost its heights, and its depths; its summits and 
its abysses; all its grandeurs, and all its horrors; all its sublimity 
and all its barbarity. — Oscar W. Firkins 

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all 
the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of 
destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition 
and revenge; upon which fell the gloom of darkness and despair and 
death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which 
was the inverted sky, lit with the eternal stars — an intellectual 
ocean — toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles 
and continents of thought received their dew and rain. 

— Robert Ingersoll 

3. The Analogy. This is an example that involves compari¬ 
son. It is used most frequently in argumentative speeches, 
although it may be used to advantage in any speech. An 
analogy proceeds on the theory that because two things are 
alike in several known particulars essential to the comparison, 


IOI 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 

they are probably alike in certain other unknown particulars. 
We reason that, because the several states in our Union can get 
along together most of the time without fighting each other, a 
union of European states might be able to work out some sort 
of satisfactory plan of cooperation. The points of resemblance 
are that the states which originally made up the American 
union were independent and sovereign states, and gave up a 
part of their sovereignty for safety when they organized the 
United States of America. From these points of known resem¬ 
blance we infer that the two cases might be alike in the one 
particular unknown: namely, the success of the venture. The 
problem of race feelings and race hatreds would enter in to 
make the situation somewhat different, but the analogy is sug¬ 
gestive. 

Mary Livermore, in her lecture, “The Battle of Life,” in 
which she pleads for making the struggle less severe, uses the 
following analogy with telling effect: 

When you travel in Switzerland, in the neighborhood of the high 
mountains, you will sometimes come across a group of people in the 
valley, who are intently observing some object through a powerful 
glass. On inquiry, you will learn that a company of tourists, with 
guides, are making the ascent of Mount Blanc. You take your place 
amidst the sight-seers. And while you watch the group slowly making 
their perilous way along the dizzy heights, two or three lose their 
footing, drop suddenly out of sight, and are gone. Your heart stops 
its beating; — you are sure they have fallen to a horrible death, down 
the steep, jagged rocks, into the inaccessible depths below. You 
look again. No, they are not lost; one is restored to his place in the 
long line of climbers, and slowly the others struggle up into view, and 
cautiously they resume their upward march. What is the explana¬ 
tion? 

Before they came to the dangerous places they tied themselves 
together with strong ropes, both the tourists and the guides, and 
braced themselves at every step with their steel-pointed alpen-stocks, 
which they planted firmly in the frozen snow and ice. Those who 
dropped down behind the treacherous ridges were held by the strength 


102 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


of their companions on either side, who, firmly braced, arrested their 
descent into the horrors below, and drew them back into line, in 
safety. So it is in life. Many a one is saved from ruin by the wise 
and strong love of the friends who retain their hold upon him, and 
halt him in his downward plunge. 

You should always be on your guard against superficial re¬ 
semblances. You may know the story of De Lesseps who built 
the Suez Canal, and thought that because he could build the 
Suez Canal at a profit, he could also build a Panama Canal at a 
profit. He tried it and failed, after sinking a fortune in the 
venture. 

4. The Anecdote. The anecdote, or story, is an extremely 
valuable form of support in a speech, and you will do well to 
cultivate its use. The anecdote is a personal incident, sometimes 
a bit of biography, usually an amusing one, although not neces¬ 
sarily so. 

The anecdote is especially appropriate in the lighter forms 
of address, like the after-dinner speech, but it may be used in 
all kinds of speeches. You will find from one to half a dozen 
anecdotes in many of Wendell Phillips’ speeches. Bryan used 
the anecdote with telling effect. It is probably the easiest way 
to get humor in a speech, although not the most distinctive 
way. As a means of holding attention, the anecdote, if rightly 
used, is an important speech device. 

In choosing your anecdotes, be sure they are appropriate for 
speeches. You are not obliged to use the barber-shop and 
pool-hall variety. There are plenty of good anecdotes to be 
found in literature, especially the literature of oratory. Modern 
Eloquence is a storehouse of good anecdotes. Biographies will 
yield many interesting anecdotes, and so will your own personal 
experiences. Lincoln was a great storyteller although he did 
not use many stories in his speeches, largely because his speeches 
dealt mostly with serious subjects. 

All good things may be abused, and many are, including the 
anecdote. That is nothing against the anecdote. The story is 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 


103 

not an end in itself. When it is so used, it is usually bad. When 
used as a means to an end, to drive home truth, it is a very 
effective instrument. 

David Lloyd George used an anecdote to bring vividly home 
the idea that while we are always willing to take credit to 
ourselves when things go well, we are not so ready to assume 
responsibility when things go wrong. He applied this to the 
nations in regard to the victory won in the war, and the trou¬ 
blous times that followed. 

Who smashed Germany? Who destroyed Austria? Who created 
this impotence which makes it difficult to execute treaties? Well, if 
you had asked it on Armistice Day, we all would have gently hinted 
that it was really done by us. 

There was an old preacher in our country who, going on the 
Saturday night to his preaching engagement, saw on the roadside a 
haystack, very neat, very well put together; it looked very firm. 
And he saw a farmer standing alongside it, and he said, “Who made 
that excellent haystack?” “Oh,” he said, “I did it; I did it.” 

The following day there was a great storm, and on Monday morn¬ 
ing, when the old preacher was returning that way, the haystack had 
been scattered all over the field in hopeless confusion. And he saw 
the same farmer standing there, and he said to him, “That was very 
badly put together; that was not very well done. Who did it?” 

“Well,” he said, “we did it somehow between us.” 

That is really true of the condition of things in Europe; we were 
all responsible for the victory; we each contributed his part; we each 
did something toward shattering the fabric and we have got our 
responsibility for what follows. 

Roe Fulkerson tells an amusing story to illustrate the feverish 
haste in American life. 

We all rush through the world like a bicycle cop and a joy rider, 
racing for a ten-dollar purse. 

The mother-in-law of a busy business man died. His wife, of 
course, had to go to the home town for the funeral. The man agreed 
to see that his several kids were put to bed the night she was gone. 
On her return she asked if he had had any trouble. “Only the little 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


104 

red-headed one,” he answered. “I had to lick her before she would go 
to bed.” “Why John,” replied his wife. “That is not our child. 
She lives across the street.” 

5. The Fable. The fable is very much like the anecdote in 
form, except that the incident is taken from the animal world 
instead of from human society. In the fable, animals and 
inanimate objects are personified and made to talk like persons. 
The fable is not extensively used by speakers, not nearly so 
much as its merits warrant. We meet it occasionally, however, 
and always with good effect. You will make no mistake in 
familiarizing yourself with a good collection of fables for pur¬ 
poses of speaking. J 

Beecher used a fable in his effort to make ridiculous the 
claim of fear on the part of the people of Harper’s Ferry when 
John Brown made his invasion and raid. 

And the attempt to hide the fear of these surrounded men by 
awaking a larger fear will never do. It is too literal a fulfillment, not 
exactly of prophecy but of fable; not of Isaiah but of .Esop. 

A fox having been caught in a trap, escaped with the loss of his tail. 
He immediately went to his brother foxes to persuade them that they 
would all look better if they too would cut off their tails. They de¬ 
clined. And our two thousand friends, who lost their courage in the 
presence of seventeen men, are now making an appeal to this nation 
to lose its courage too, that the cowardice of the few maybe hidden in 
the cowardice of the whole community. It is impossible. We choose 
to wear our courage for some time longer. 

Wendell Phillips uses a fable to show that the attitude of 
Webster on slavery, while it was no doubt an expedient one, 
was not altogether comfortable. 

Did you ever hear the fable of the wolf and the house dog? The one 
was fat, the other gaunt and famine-struck. The wolf said to the dog, 
“You are very fat.” “Yes,” replied the dog, “I get along very well 
at home.” “Well,” said the wolf, “could you take me home?” “O, 
certainly.” So they trotted along together; but as they neared the 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 105 

house, the wolf caught sight of several ugly scars on the neck of the 
dog, and, stopping, cried, “Where did you get those scars on your 
neck? they look very sore and bloody.” “O,” said the dog, “they tie 
me up at night, and I have rather an inconvenient iron collar on my 
neck. But that’s a small matter; they feed me well.” “On the 
whole,” said the wolf, “taking the food and the collar together, I 
prefer to remain in the woods.” Now, if I am allowed to choose, I do 
not like the collar of Daniel Webster and Parson Dewey, and there 
are certain ugly scars I see about their necks. I should not like, 
Dr. Dewey, to promise to return my mother to slavery; and, Mr. 
Webster, I prefer to be lean and keep my “prejudices,” to getting fat 
by smothering them. 

6. The Parable. The parable is an extremely effective form 
of illustration. It finds exemplification principally in the New 
Testament. The truths expressed in the Gospels derive their 
vitality in large part from the striking manner in which they 
are expressed. The parable is a pictorial presentation of truth, 
and as such has the advantage of the “eye appeal.” It is not 
found extensively in oratorical literature, probably because so 
few men have the art to apply it. As a form of illustration it 
is worthy of consideration, and always effective when skillfully 
used. It presents truth clearly, is easy to understand, and so 
requires a minimum of mental effort. 

The parables of the New Testament are presumably so well 
known that examples are not necessary. In his lecture, “Indi¬ 
viduality,” Robert Ingersoll uses the following parable to sug¬ 
gest the folly of trying to compel conformity to certain beliefs 
or ways of living. 

A monarch said to a hermit, “ Come with me and I will give you 
power.” 

“I have all the power that I know how to use,” replied the hermit. 

“Come,” said the king, “I will give you wealth.” 

“I have no wants that money can supply,” said the hermit. 

“I will give you honor,” said the monarch. 

“Ah, honor cannot be given, it must be earned,” was the hermit’s 


answer. 


106 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

“Come,” said the king, making a last appeal, “and I will give you 
happiness.” 

“No,” said the man of solitude, “there is no happiness without 
liberty, and he who follows cannot be free.” 

“You shall have liberty too,” said the king. 

“Then I will stay where I am,” said the old man. 

And all the king’s courtiers thought the hermit a fool. 

All these forms of illustration are in effect comparisons and 
embody familiar experiences that are vivid and hold attention. 
Whenever we can ground what we want to say in the universal 
experiences of the race, we may be reasonably sure that we are 
on solid ground, and that our listeners will feel the same 
way. 

Illustrations Furnish Pictorial Elements in Speaking. Illus¬ 
trations always embody mental images or imagery that may 
appeal to any of the senses. For our purpose, the most impor¬ 
tant ones are those that appeal to the senses of sight and hear¬ 
ing. At the heart of every metaphor is a picture, and as a 
rule, that holds true for the simile and all the other forms of 
illustration. “Talk in terms of pictures” is advice we often 
hear these days, and it is sound if we understand what it 
means. When we speak of being concrete, talking in terms of 
pictures, using examples and illustrations, we mean pretty 
much the same thing. We take in more experiences through 
the sense of sight than through any other. We speak of going 
to “see the city,” “see the factories,” “see the schools.” Even 
in the days of the old drama, we spoke of “seeing” the play. 
This will explain why the silent “movie” had such a hold on 
the popular imagination, and why the play and the novel 
which present pictures are such popular forms of amusement 
and instruction. 

Newell Dwight Hillis, in his introduction to Beecher’s A 
Treasury of Illustration , affirms: 

The highest genius is pictorial; the works that abide are pictures. 
Homer’s Iliad is a gallery of pictures; Dante’s threefold epic of the 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 107 

unseen world is another. And so it is with Shakespeare, and all the 
rest of the sons of fame, to whom not only certain classes of specialists 
but all men of all time pay glad reverence. Others there have been, 
indeed — a glorious company — whose contributions of invention, 
statesmanship, learning, or criticism have mightly influenced their 
own and later times, without surviving in individual form to be 
reckoned among the world’s eternal masterpieces. No doubt we owe 
more in the aggregate to this host of thinkers and actors than to the 
few crowned ones. But the question of merit and reward does not 
concern me here. I would only point out the recognised, universal, 
and imperishable supremacy of the genius which sees and says 
pictorially. 

To the galaxy of the great in pictorial presentation belong 
the great orators quite as much as the poets. Especially is 
this true of our great popular orators: Beecher, Phillips, Inger- 
soll, Starr King, Bryan, George W. Curtis, and others. Simili¬ 
tudes dropped from their lips like rain from the clouds. Some 
of their more carefully prepared speeches have about enough 
structure and logic to hold the illustrations in place. They 
literally teem with metaphor, simile, analogy, and anecdote. 
The following table will serve to give one a vivid notion of the 
affluence of illustration to be found in some of Wendell Phillips’ 
better-known speeches. 


Harper’s Ferry Address. 

Metaphors 

89 

Similes 

8 

Analogies 

33 

Anecdotes 

3 

The Scholar in a Republic. .. 

78 

5 

24 

1 

Progress. 

76 

7 

27 

0 

Lincoln’s Election. 

6l 

8 

29 

5 

Daniel O’Connell. 

55 

5 

22 

6 

Under the Flag. 

47 

3 

9 


Idols. 

39 

4 

17 


The Pulpit. 

39 

3 

7 


Disunion. 

64 

3 

22 


Christianity a Battle. 

33 

4 

4 


The Puritan Principle & J. B. 

3i 

3 

17 


Education of the People . . . . 

27 

1 

10 

2 













io8 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


When we remember that most of these speeches are only from 
six to eight thousand words long, we may well be impressed 
with the wealth of illustrative materials that is to be found in 
them. In this concrete, imaginative, objective presentation of 
truth, the great orators largely get their effects. 

All illustrations, to be apt, [says Beecher] should touch your 
audience where their level is. I do not know that this art can be 
learned; but I may suggest that it is a good thing in looking over an 
audience, to cultivate the habit of seeing illustrations in them. If I 
see a seaman sitting among my audience, I do not say: “I will use 
him as a figure” and apply it personally; but out of him jumps an 
illustration from the sea, and it comes to seek me out. If there be a 
watchmaker present that I happen to recognize, my next illustration 
will very likely be from horology; though he will be utterly uncon¬ 
scious of the use I have made of him. Then I see a school mistress, 
and my next illustration will be out of school teaching. Thus where 
your audience is known to you, the illustration ought not simply to 
meet your wants as a speaker, but it should meet the wants of your 
congregation; it should be a help to them. 1 

Cultivate, therefore, the art of so presenting your ideas that 
your listeners can see them with their mind’s eye. It is well 
enough to use illustrations that call up other forms of imagery 
as well, such as the auditory and olfactory; but you will find 
that the visual image will serve you much more often than any 
of the others. 

An interesting specimen of concreteness and the use of illus¬ 
trations is furnished by “The Scholar in a Republic,” by Wen¬ 
dell Phillips. In this lecture there are ninety-two references 
to historical personages, seventy-eight metaphors, five similes, 
twenty-four analogies, and sixty-four quotations from literature, 
history, and the contemporary press. 

Sources of Illustrations. We may draw on many sources for 
our illustrations; such as nature, history, literature, science, 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim Press: First Series, p. 169. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 


109 

the fine arts, and objects from everyday life. Beecher got many 
of his illustrations from nature and the fine arts. Wendell 
Phillips drew his more from history and literature, using many 
classic references, although he made use of all sources. Lincoln 
drew his largely from everyday life, occasionally from the Bible 
and Shakespeare. Woodrow Wilson borrowed one of the 
best illustrations he ever used from so homely an object as the 
ordinary well pump. “Where corporations,” said he in effect, 
“make large contributions to political campaigns, they expect 
returns multiplied many times. It is very much like priming a 
pump. When you prime a pump, you expect to get out of it 
much more than you put in.” 

Consider this from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

There is no power I envy so much — said the divinity-student — 
as that of seeing analogies and making comparisons. I don’t under¬ 
stand how it is that some minds are continually coupling thoughts or 
objects that seem not in the least related to each other, until all at 
once they are put in a certain light, and you wonder that you did not 
always see that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me 
a sort of miraculous gift. 

You call it miraculous, — I replied, — tossing the expression with 
my facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear. — Two men are walking 
by the polyphloesboean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup 
with which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and the 
other nothing but his hands, which will hardly hold water at all, — 
and you call the tin cup a miraculous possession! It is the ocean that 
is the miracle, my infant apostle! 

If all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that 
maddening narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or 
smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women, — if the dreams 
of colleges and convents and boarding-schools, — if every human 
feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should 
bring all their innumerable images, such as come with every hurried 
heart-beat, — the epic that held them all, though its letters filled the 
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and 
analogies that rolls through the universe. 


no 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


The Advantages of Illustrations. The question may well be 
asked: Why are illustrations used so extensively by the best 
speakers? There must be reasons for it. There are, as a matter 
of fact — several of them. Let us examine two important 
ones. 

1. Illustrations aid the memory. It is a well-known fact that, 
long after we have forgotten principles and precepts, we remem¬ 
ber the anecdotes, parables, figures of speech, and fables used 
to illustrate them. Not only do we do most of our thinking in 
images, but we assuredly also do most of our remembering by 
means of images. An image is a memory peg on which we can 
hang general statements. Without such pegs to hang them on, 
broad statements in the abstract, no matter how true and 
vital, are forgotten almost as soon as heard. It is by means of 
a well-selected picture, image, or illustration that a “glittering 
generality” may become a “blazing ubiquity.” We not only 
understand a thing better when we can see it in the mind’s 
eye, but we remember it infinitely longer. When we once see a 
beautiful landscape or a beautiful building, the image remains 
in memory almost indefinitely. When we merely hear it de¬ 
scribed in a general way, the picture soon fades. 

It was Woodrow Wilson who observed, in his many years of 
teaching, that long after his students had forgotten all the 
history he had taught them, they remembered the stories he 
had told them. It is probable that a good deal of history may 
have stuck to the stories. When we once understand the posi¬ 
tion which Lincoln sought to make clear with his “house divided 
against itself” illustration, we not only remember the compari¬ 
son but also Lincoln’s attitude on the slavery question as ex¬ 
pounded in his “Springfield Speech.” 

So it is true, as Beecher has well put it, that “Your-illustra¬ 
tions will be the salt that will preserve your teachings, and men 
will remember them.” 1 

2. Illustrations economize mental effort. One of the things 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim Press: First Series, p. 159. 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 


hi 


a speaker has to learn is to understand the limitations of an 
audience in following a speech. It requires a great deal of 
mental effort to listen to a speech for any length of time, unless 
there happens to be a master on the platform. It is a great 
art to know how to speak for an hour or hour and a half with¬ 
out tiring the mind and losing attention. Broad generalities 
and abstract statements are a constant tax on the understand¬ 
ing. As mental diet they are heavy as lead, and there is a 
limit to what the mind can carry. 

The reason that it is more difficult to apprehend general 
and abstract statements than specific and concrete ones is that 
the former are much more indefinite in meaning than the 
latter. If we say, “John drinks a glass of water every morn¬ 
ing before breakfast,” we know in a moment exactly what that 
means. But if we say, “John has just enough imagination to 
spoil his judgment,” we cannot grasp the full meaning of that 
immediately, unless we happen to be familiar with the aphorism 
and have given it some thought beforehand. Otherwise it will 
require some reflection and speculation to get at the full mean¬ 
ing. If half a dozen statements like this follow each other in 
rapid succession, it is easy to see that not only will any ordinary 
mind tire of trying to follow, but most minds will give it up. 

Santayana opens a paragraph as follows: “We must remem¬ 
ber that ever since the days of Socrates, and especially after 
the establishment of Christianity, the dice of thought have 
been loaded. Certain pledges have preceded inquiry and have 
divided the possible conclusions beforehand with the acceptable 
and inacceptable, the edifying and the shocking, the noble and 
the base.” Now, even an erudite reader may want to ponder 
a moment over this to drink in the full meaning, and what it 
ultimately means to him will depend to some extent on what 
is in his head before he reads it. Imagine an audience trying 
to interpret the meaning of sentences like these as the speaker 
addresses them. Even if a group of the elect could do it, it 
would tire them out in a short time. As Oliver Wendell Holmes 


11 2 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


said, nothing should go into a speech or lecture that five 
hundred persons cannot grasp the moment it is uttered. 
Illustrations are among the most efficient means of making 
understanding easy. They always deal with the concrete, and 
the concrete requires very little mental effort to comprehend. 
We can look at pictures a long time without much mental 
fatigue. About all that is required is to keep awake. 

Illustrations conserve attention also by lending variety to 
speech materials and forms of appeal. The importance of 
variety in holding attention is discussed more fully in Chapter 
XVIII, “What Holds Attention.” We may use facts and 
figures and address the understanding. We may reason and 
draw inferences, and address the reflective mind or judgment. 
We may use illustrations — draw pictures — and appeal to the 
imagination. We may appeal to the emotions and provoke 
laughter, or perhaps tears. If one can, in addition, make the 
thought sparkle with originality and wit, it will be all the more 
effective. The secret of holding the attention, especially in a 
long speech, is to vary the appeal , by using illustrations as well 
as other forms of support. This is precisely the method used 
by successful speakers. 

Illustrations and Mixed Audiences. In preparing speeches 
for mixed audiences, composed of grown-ups and children, and 
persons on different levels of information and intelligence — 
most audiences are of that type — one must offer such a variety 
of mental diet that all may receive some nourishment, or get 
at least a taste. For the better informed, one may offer some¬ 
thing substantial — facts, ideas, inferences; but it would be 
folly to feed a mixed audience exclusively on that kind of diet. 
The children and the less well informed will need stories, inci¬ 
dents, personal experiences that are suited to their type of under¬ 
standing and enjoyment. The language used must be simple, 
the sentences short and crisp. Fortunately the interests of the 
different groups in any assembly are not mutually exclusive. 
It is true that the more substantial, or at any rate the more 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 113 

abstract and general, parts of the speech will not serve the 
youngsters or the less well informed; but the lighter portions, 
the incidents, anecdotes, and the other forms of illustrations, 
will serve all just about equally well, old as well as young, the 
erudite and cultured as well as the ignorant and unlettered. 

In speaking of this problem as related to the minister, 
Beecher has this to say: 

You are bound to see that everybody gets something every time. There 
ought not to be a five-year-old child that shall go home without some¬ 
thing that pleases and instructs him. 

How are you going to do that? I know of no other way than by 
illustration. 

I have around my pulpit, and sometimes crowding upon the plat¬ 
form, a good many of the boys and girls of the congregation. I 
notice that, during the general statements of the sermon and the 
exegetical parts of it, introducing the main discourse, the children are 
playing with each other. One will push a hymn-book or a hat toward 
the other, and they will set each other laughing. That which ought not 
to be done is, with children, very funny and amusing. By and by I 
have occasion to use an illustration, and I happen to turn round and 
look at the children, and not one of them is playing, but they are all 
looking up with interest depicted on their faces. I did not think of 
them in making it, perhaps, but I saw, when the food fell out in that 
way, that even the children were fed too. You will observe that the 
children in the congregation will usually know perfectly well whether 
there is anything in the sermon for them or not. There always ought 
to be, and there is no way in which you can prepare a sermon for the 
delectation of the plain people, and the uncultured, and little children, 
better than by making it attractive and instructive with illustrations. 
It is always the best method to adopt with a mixed audience. 1 

While it is a fact that the ordinary audience is somewhat 
heterogeneous, it is also a fact that no one need be discouraged 
on that account so far as adaptation of speech materials goes. 
It is an attribute of illustrations that almost invariably they 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim Press: First Series, p. 163. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


114 

embody experiences that have in them the element of univer¬ 
sality. That is, in fact, the essence of a good illustration. For 
every experience peculiar to a group, there are scores of experi¬ 
ences that are common to all people. Whether a man be a 
merchant, a farmer, a lawyer, a laborer, a preacher, a teacher, 
a salesman or a chimney sweep, he is first of all a man and shares 
with all others the common life of home, friends, community, 
state, and nation. He walks the same earth and gets his 
sustenance from it; is warmed and lighted by the same sun; 
has his life fashioned by much the same institutions — schools, 
press, platform, and church; and in considerable measure is 
moulded by the same artistic and cultural influences. 

The adaptation of speeches to audiences of different groups 
requires tact and judgment. It is well enough to speak in the 
language of your listeners and seek illustrations that come 
peculiarly within their lives. But it can be easily overdone. 
The moment an audience senses that you are making a conscious 
effort to come down to their level, the chances are good that 
they will become suspicious of your sincerity. A university 
professor gave a commencement address at a high school in 
a rather progressive town of about one thousand people. He 
tried so hard to see things from their point of view and speak 
in terms of their own everyday experiences that, according to 
the statement of the superintendent of schools, he made himself 
ridiculous and the audience disgusted. 

Facility in the Use of Illustrations May Be Cultivated. The 
best way to learn to use illustrations is to use them. Practice 
here as elsewhere tends to make perfect. In order to make 
proper use of them, one must be impressed with the significant 
part they play in good speaking. To be so impressed, one must 
read extensively the speeches of men who have been masters in 
the art of communicating ideas. One must study their methods 
of using illustrations. Doubtless individuals differ here greatly. 
Some have a native aptitude for seeing and presenting things 
in the concrete; others naturally incline to the abstract. Those 


FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 


115 

with imaginative temperaments will find the habit of using 
illustrations easy to form; the unimaginative will find it diffi¬ 
cult. 

Once more we quote Beecher, himself one of the greatest of 
all masters in the use of illustrations: 

I can say, for your encouragement, that while illustrations are as 
natural to me as breathing, I use fifty now to one in the early years of 
my ministry. For the first six or eight years, perhaps, they were 
comparatively few and far apart. But I developed a tendency that 
was latent in me, and educated myself in that respect; and that, too, 
by study and practice, by hard thought, and by a great many trials, 
both with the pen, and extemporaneously by myself, when I was 
walking here and there. Whatever I have gained in that direction is 
largely the result of education. You need not, therefore, be dis¬ 
couraged if it does not come to you immediately. You cannot be men 
at once in these things. This world is God’s anvil, and whatever is 
fit for the battle has been beaten out on that anvil, and it has felt 
the fire before it has felt the blow. So that whatever you would get 
in this world that is worth having, you must work for. 

In Conclusion. Illustrations constitute in large part the 
imaginative or pictorial element in speaking. Modern psy¬ 
chology stresses the importance of this in our education. The 
great mass of information which we get both from school sub¬ 
jects and elsewhere comes to us through the sense of sight. 
“Seeing is believing,” to say nothing about understanding. 
Motion pictures are becoming a part of the equipment of every 
progressive school. We think largely in pictures, and remember 
almost exclusively in terms of pictures. This element, there¬ 
fore, in any method of communication, is extremely important; 
in speaking, more so than anywhere else. Facility in the use of 
illustrations is the most distinctive earmark of great speaking. 
It is this imaginative, pictorial element in The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table — informal talks — that gives it distinction and 
makes it one of the world’s great books. It is this same pictorial 
element that gives distinction to our great speeches. Whoever 


n6 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


would excel in speaking should form the habit of freely using 
illustrations. 


EXERCISES 

1. Study critically one of the speeches listed below for the use of 
illustrations and other forms of support. Classify illustrations and 
show how often each form is used. 

2. Choose a proposition and support it briefly for a definite purpose, 
using one of the following anecdotes, or any that you consider 
equally good. 

a. A friend called on Michelangelo, who was finishing a statue. 
Some time afterward he called again; the sculptor was still at 
work. His friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed, “You have 
been idle since I saw you last.” 

“By no means,” replied the sculptor. “I retouched this 
feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more ex¬ 
pression to this lip, and more energy to this limb.” 

“Well, well,” said the friend, “but all these are trifles.” 

“It may be so,” replied the sculptor, “but recollect that 
trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.” 

b. A man walking on an icy sidewalk slipped and fell. Just then 
the parson happened by, and seeing the accident remarked, 
“Sinners stand on slippery ground.” 

To which the other replied, “I don’t see how they do it.” 

c. “Why don’t you let your little brother have your sled with 
you,” said Willie’s mother. 

“I do. I have the sled going downhill, and he has it going 
uphill.” 

3. Look up some fables. Write a paragraph in connection with one 
of your speeches, and use a fable as an illustration. 

4. Bring to class some parables from the New Testament. Show how 
they are used and discuss their effectiveness. 

Speeches READINGS 

“Commencement Address,” by William Lyon Phelps ( Lindgren ). 

“Abraham Lincoln,” by Robert Ingersoll (Vol. III). 

“The Choice of Books,” by Frederic Harrison (Vol. VII). 



FORMS OF SUPPORT: ILLUSTRATIONS 117 

References 

Henry Ward Beecher: Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim 
Press: First Series, Chap. VII. 

Harry Allen Overstreet: Influencing Human Behavior (1925), Chaps. 
Ill and VIII. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. X. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chap. X. 
Arleigh Boyd Williamson: Speaking in Public (1929), Chap. XII. 



CHAPTER IX 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 

The person who advocates a standard as valid for other people must 
create its validity for them by creating the corresponding desires and values. 
— DeWitt H. Parker 

The aim of all persuasive speaking is to influence human 
behavior. It is to mould the minds and hearts of men so that 
they will act in accordance with the views set up and supported 
by the speaker. We have therefore to inquire into those springs 
of human behavior which lead men to do certain things and 
avoid others. 

The Meaning of Want Appeal. We recognize certain values 
in life, which are grounded in our experience. We feel that 
some experiences are worth more than others, or mean more to 
us. We shall find that our experiences are valuable in propor¬ 
tion to their capacity to satisfy human wants or gratify human 
desires. Life is a never-ending quest for the satisfaction of 
human impulses or cravings that are constantly urging us on. 
We are all governed or motivated by our wants, wishes, desires, 
prejudices — fundamental urges that move us and move the 
world. These we call our fundamental life interests. Reason 
may serve to evaluate desire, or at least see to it that all our 
impulses get a hearing; but in our impulses or desires we must 
seek largely the motor power for our actions. The essential 
problem of the speaker is to harness these impulses to the views 
he sets forth or the course of conduct which he advocates. It 
is not enough merely to suggest a course of action to an audience, 
or to give reasons for its adoption. The crux of the speech 
problem in persuasion is to set up a system of adequate rewards 
in the minds of the listeners, to show them that what the 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


119 

speaker wants them to believe or do is in line with their best 
interests. The chief aim in advertising is to create a desire for 
the product or service advertised. So, in speaking,- the impor¬ 
tant objective is to build up a desire on the part of the audience 
for whatever course of action is advocated. 

In order to have an idea prevail, it is necessary to harness it 
to men’s desires. “ Suggestions to action which cannot in some 
way lay hold of these ‘ system desires ’ are never accepted by us 
as standards for our behavior.” 1 Show an audience that they 
can gratify certain fundamental desires by supporting the policy 
you advocate, and they will be with you heart and soul. We 
are willing to believe almost anything if it can be shown that it 
is to our advantage, or if we are predisposed, to believe it. We 
have a strong tendency to believe what we want to believe. 

To link up our speech aim, or the course of action advocated, 
with the satisfaction of fundamental human wants; to show that 
behavior in accordance with our aim means the fulfillment of 
desire, is to motivate an audience through want appeal. 

Classification of Motives. 2 The wants or motives that impel 
men to action are reasonably well understood, although there 
is not entire agreement as to how they are derived. They lie 
largely within the range of our feelings and emotions, and vary 
in character from the meanest to the highest. Most of us 
understand tolerably well how our actions are influenced by 
such considerations as fear, anger, love, hate, pride, vanity, 
property, power, jealousy, shame, curiosity, emulation or rivalry, 
gratitude, charitableness, pity, desire for comfort, pleasure; 
love of children, family, friends, community, country; love of 
liberty, love of justice, love of art, literature, love of approba¬ 
tion, dread of public censure, fear of ridicule. 

Persuasive speeches depend so largely for their effectiveness 

1 DeWitt Henry Parker: Human Values (1931), P- 38. 

2 This follows closely, and elaborates somewhat, the classification given 
in Arthur Edward Phillips: Elective Speaking (1908), Chap, V, See also 
DeWitt Henry Parker: Human Values (1931), Chap. III. 


120 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


on skillful appeal to these motives that it is worth while to get 
a broad survey of the subject. Always the problem is to show 
that what you advocate will gratify human wants and desires, 
particularly those of your audience. 

In treating of motives and the manner of appealing to them, 
it is of advantage to consider them in groups. No accurate 
classification is possible, for the reason that in civilized societies 
motives are so complex. We may speak, for instance, of the 
acquisitive instinct — man’s desire to possess things, as for 
example wealth. But that is really a complex motive com¬ 
pounded of several simple ones. Besides mere acquisition, it 
involves love of family, of social position, of power, and perhaps 
love of fame. It may be helpful to know that most of the impel¬ 
ling motives of action are derived from a few primary disposi¬ 
tions deep rooted in our nature. For practical purposes they 
may be grouped as follows: 

i. Self-preservation: Security; Playing Safe. “Self-preser¬ 
vation is the first law of life.” All people wish to keep well and 
strong, to avoid sickness and disease and “the thousand natural 
shocks that flesh is heir to.” They wish to keep their persons 
safe from harm, and to minimize the hazards that endanger 
lives. Out of these motives arises an endless variety of actions 
public and private. In the interest of personal health and 
safety, we enact pure food laws, provide for milk inspection and 
building inspection, establish medical colleges, organize boards 
of health, provide fire and police protection, safety appliances 
on railroads, safety equipment in factories, lighthouses on the 
high seas, lifeguards on lakes and ocean beaches. 

In business, the patent medicine vender who can make his 
patrons believe that his product best prevents disease and con¬ 
serves health multiplies his sales; the grocer who handles the 
freshest and purest of foods gets the customers; the railroad 
that can show the best-constructed coaches and the longest 
line of double tracks, other things equal, gets the business. 
The politician who can credit his party with the most relentless 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


121 


war on diseases, the most rigid enforcement of pure food laws, 
and general protection of the public health, will get the votes — 
and he should. 

Growing out of this group of motives are large and varied 
expenditures for social or public security. Individual preserva¬ 
tion depends in part on national safety. For this end, sup¬ 
posedly, we organize our standing armies, fortify our coasts, 
build our battleships, maintain our navies, and, if necessary, 
fight our wars with foreign nations. 

Numerous appeals to this motive are to be found in political 
speeches and addresses. For many years after the Civil War, 
the strongest appeal the Republican Party could make was that 
it “saved the Union.” Lincoln, in his debates with Douglas, 
sought to show that the Union could not endure permanently 
half slave and half free; that slavery was the one thing that 
had ever threatened its existence and with it that of free insti¬ 
tutions — those safeguards thrown about the freedom of the 
individual. The purpose of the Philippics of Demosthenes was 
to arouse the Athenians to a realization of the threatened danger 
from the north and to make an appeal for defense of Athens 
and her liberties. Webster, in the‘well-known peroration of 
his “Reply to Hayne,” made his appeal largely to the motive of 
national safety, “the preservation of the Union.” 

It is to that Union we owe safety at home and our consideration 
and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted 
for whatever makes us most proud of our country. . . . Every year 
of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its 
blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and 
wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not 
outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious 
fountain of national, social and personal happiness. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt in his speech of acceptance of the 
Democratic nomination for President at the Democratic Na¬ 
tional Convention held in Chicago, July 2, 1932, sought to 


122 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


motivate the American people by an appeal to this same motive 
— economic security — which is one of the most fundamental 
of human wants: 

In my mind are two things; work, work with all the moral and 
spiritual values that go with work. And with work, a reasonable 
measure of security, security for themselves and for their wives and 
children. 

These are more than words. They are more than facts. They are 
the spiritual values, the true goal to which efforts at reconstruction 
should lead. These are the values that this program is intended to 
gain. 


2. Love of Family , Home , and Friends. Solicitude for our 
own safety and well-being is naturally extended to those who 
are the objects of our affections. Our love for those near and 
dear to us is rooted in that impulse of protection and tenderness 
that we call the parental instinct. It is this feeling that is the 
foundation of the family, and is declared by some writers to be 
the source of all altruistic impulses. It impels the mother to 
self-sacrifice and unremitting toil in behalf of her offspring. 
It causes the ambitions of parents to be merged in the welfare 
of their children. The associations of “home” are among the 
strongest of human ties; the attachment to friends, among the 
strongest of our possessions. These interests usurp a large 
place in human activities. 

How may we appeal to these motives? By showing that the 
course of action advocated will favorably affect the lives of 
those who hold the hearer’s affections. The salesman, instead 
of emphasizing solely the merits of the piano, will show the 
mother how much a piano will mean to her daughter. The 
defender of liquor legislation will draw vivid pictures of young 
careers blighted by intemperance. The successful politician un¬ 
derstands the strength of the family affections and gets into the 
good graces of the voters of his district by showering favors on 
their wives and children. As Beecher put it: 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


123 

He can shake hands with more mothers, kiss more pretty girls and 
more babies, and tell more funny stories in an hour than any other 
man in a month, and so they send him up to make laws. 1 

3. Ambition: Desire for Power and Glory . Motives kindred 
to this are emulation and pride. These motives have as their 
end the attainment of influence among our fellows. Among our 
most cherished satisfactions is a feeling of personal worth and 
social recognition. The desire to be superior motivates almost 
all normal beings. The boy takes great pride in being the best 
swimmer, the best rider, or the best ball player. In adult 
years, this motive takes the form of the desire for leadership. 
Social ambition, political ambition, professional ambition, all 
have their origin here. Superior mental endowments, accumu¬ 
lated wealth, mechanical and inventive skill, scientific re¬ 
searches, even brute physical prowess, are all sources of influence. 
The prize orator and prize debater find keen satisfaction in 
their persuasive skill. 

Lecturers on the power of personality, much in vogue these 
days, make their appeal mostly to this group of motives. So 
do speeches that hold up to view the value of education, self- 
improvement, industry, excelling in scholarship. 

Craving for power varies greatly in different individuals, 
although desire for superior excellence in some line is strong in 
most people. Within bounds, it is a worthy motive, and adds 
much to the zest of life. Lincoln was known to be intensely 
ambitious. With Napoleon, love of power was a consuming 
flame. Much of what passes for philanthropy, these days, 
must be ascribed to a desire for personal worth and social 
recognition. 

Charles Phillips, the brilliant Irish orator, in an eloquent 
panegyric to American democracy, takes occasion to remind 
his fellow statesmen that national power and glory are often 
short-lived because governments do not build on right founda¬ 
tions. 


1 “The Reign of the Common People.’ 


124 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the 
grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of 
an universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful hero¬ 
ism, or all the establishments of this world’s wisdom, secure to empire 
the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet 
the land of Priam lives only in song! Thebes thought so once, yet her 
hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust 
they were vainly intended to commemorate! So thought Palmyra — 
where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the 
Spartan, yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens 
insulted by the servile, mindless and enervate Ottoman! In his hur¬ 
ried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and 
all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, 
erased the very impression of his footsteps! The days of their glory 
are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, 
rude and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of 
their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of 
their bards! Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that 
England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what 
Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was! 
Who shall say, when the European column shall have mouldered, and 
the night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty 
continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule for its time 
sovereign of the ascendant! 1 

4. The Acquisitive Motive. The desire to possess things is 
one of the strongest and most fundamental urges of our being. 
The child early distinguishes between “mine” and “thine,” 
loves to own its toys and trinkets. Few grow to maturity 
without having made a collection of objects of some kind or 
other. 

As we know this motive in adults, operating in civilized 
society, it is no more the simple disposition to acquire things, 
but a composite motive made up of several others, such as love 
of family, ambition, social prestige, reputation. In fact it is 
one of the strongest and most comprehensive urges in human 

1 Charles Phillips: Speeches , London, 1817. 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


125 

society, since the possession of wealth may satisfy so many 
wants and gratify so many desires. Whatever may be said for 
making money for the love of the “game,” the fact remains 
that most people desire money not for its own sake but for 
what it can buy. “You take away my life,” said Shylock, 
“when you do take away that which maintains it.” The love 
of money may be the root of all evil; it is also the spur to some 
of our greatest efforts. 

From the point of view of the public speaker, this motive 
must be reckoned with in almost every subject. Questions of 
taxation, trust regulation, safeguarding the public against 
fraudulent stocks and bonds, keeping down the ever mounting 
expenses of governments, chain stores, installment buying — 
all are in the last analysis matters of dollars and cents to us. 
The battle cry of the Republican Party for decades past has 
been “Prosperity.” “Vote the Republican ticket and the coun¬ 
try will be prosperous, and so will you.” Victory has perched 
upon the party’s banner. 

Walter Lippmann, in an address before the National Con¬ 
ference of Social Work, Philadelphia, 1932, gives credit to the 
free play of the acquisitive instinct in American society for the 
unprecedented material achievements of the nineteenth century. 

Man has invented the power to produce wealth on a scale which 
allows us to say that the most ancient of human problems — the 
problem of scarcity — has been solved. 

We who stand at the culmination of this epoch can see today that 
in order to reap the results of this achievement, in order to translate 
the power we possess into a secure and ordered civilization, we have to 
do something which is extremely difficult. We have to tamper with 
the motives which made the achievement possible. For if we are 
realistic we must acknowledge that the moving force behind the 
stupendous material work of the nineteenth century was the acquisi¬ 
tive instinct stimulated to tremendous energy by the prospect of 
enormous personal profits and personal power. 

The supreme social problem of the twentieth century, and perhaps 
for a longer time than that, is to find energies as powerful and as 


126 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


persistent as the acquisitive and the competitive which are disin¬ 
terested and co-operative in their effect. 

Beecher, in his “Liverpool Speech,” sought to show that 
what England needed most was not cotton but customers — 
customers that had some wealth and real buying power. 

It is a necessity of every manufacturing and commercial people 
that their customers should be very wealthy and intelligent. Let us 
put the subject before you in the familiar light of your own local 
experience. To whom do the tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most 
goods at the highest profit? To the ignorant and poor, or to the 
educated and prosperous? (A voice: “To the Southerners.” Laugh¬ 
ter.) The poor man buys simply for his body; he buys food, he buys 
clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. His rule is to buy the least 
and the cheapest that he can. He goes to the store as seldom as he 
can, — he brings away as little as he can, — and he buys for the least 
he can. (Much laughter.) Poverty is not a misfortune to the poor 
only who suffer it, but it is more or less a misfortune to all with whom 
they deal. On the other hand, a man well off, — how is it with him? 
He buys in far greater quantity. He can afford to do it; he has the 
money to pay for it. He buys in far greater variety, because he seeks 
to gratify not merely physical wants, but also mental wants. He 
buys for the satisfaction of sentiment and taste, as well as of sense. 
He buys silk, wool, flax, cotton; he buys all metals — iron, silver, 
gold, platinum; in short he buys for all necessities and of all sub¬ 
stances. But that is not all. He buys a better quality of goods. He 
buys richer silks, finer cottons, higher grained wools. Now, a rich 
silk means so much skill and care of somebody’s that has been ex¬ 
pended upon it to make it finer and richer; and so of cotton, and so of 
wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs back to the very be¬ 
ginning, and remunerates the workman as well as the merchant. 
Indeed, the whole laboring community is as much interested and 
profited as the mere merchant, in this buying and selling of the higher 
grades in the ‘greater varieties and quantities. 

Then Mr. Beecher proceeded to show them that the slave 
had virtually no buying power, and that the best way to make 
the South a good customer was to free the slaves. That meant, 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


127 

of course, a favorable attitude to the North, which was pre¬ 
cisely the purpose Beecher wanted to attain. 

5. Regard for Reputation. This feeling has reference to the 
regard we have for the opinions of others, of those now living as 
well as of generations yet unborn. It has to do with all those 
interests that are wrapped up in winning and preserving “our 
good name.” We wish to do those things and possess those 
qualities which in others arouse our admiration and regard, 
and for the reason that what we admire in others, we believe 
others will admire in us. To win the approval of our fellow 
men is assuredly one of the fundamental urges of our being. 

This feeling not only impels us to do things, but it also keeps 
us from doing things. It has at once a positive and negative 
influence on human conduct. On its positive side, it takes 
the form of love of public approbation, love of fame. On its 
negative side, it takes the form of dread of public censure, fear 
of ridicule. 

“A good name is more to be desired than great riches” is a 
time-honored maxim. Cassio, in Othello , bewails the loss of his 
good name in the familiar quotation: “Reputation, reputation, 
reputation. O, I have lost my reputation. I have lost the 
immortal part, Sir, of myself, and what remains is bestial. 
My reputation, Iago, my reputation!” 

The young singer, actor, or orator, takes great interest in his 
press notices. “The applause of listening senates to command” 
has always been regarded as worthy of a good man’s best efforts. 
Regard for the opinions of posterity has been a moulding influ¬ 
ence in the life of many a great man. Cicero’s love of fame is 
well known. “To extend one’s name over the world and to 
distant ages fires the human breast as the sublimest destiny to 
which mortal can achieve.” 

Bread of Public Censure: Fear of Ridicule. It is on the neg¬ 
ative side that this motive is almost all-powerful in shaping 
conduct. It is the great inhibitor of action. Nobody likes to be 
laughed at; nobody likes to be criticized by his fellows. What 


128 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


a host of noble impulses are hourly stifled by such paralyzing 
interrogations as: “ What will people think if I do this? ” “Is 
it proper? ” “ Will my friends approve of it? ” Wendell Phillips 
sought to strike terror into the hearts of those who upheld 
slavery by suggesting to them what posterity will think of them. 

You load our names with infamy, and shout us down. But our 
words bide their time. We warn the living that we have terrible 
memories, and that their sins are never to be forgotten. We will 
gibbet the name of every apostate so black and high that his children’s 
children shall blush to bear it. Yet we bear no malice, — cherish no 
resentment. We thank God that the love of fame, “ that last infirmity 
of noble minds,” is shared by the ignoble. In our necessity, we seize 
this weapon in the slave’s behalf, and teach caution to the living by 
meting out relentless justice to the dead. How strange the change 
death produces in the way a man is talked about here! While leading 
men live, they avoid as much as possible all mention of slavery, from 
fear of being thought Abolitionists. The moment they are dead, their 
friends rake up every word they ever contrived to whisper in a corner 
for liberty, and parade it before the world; growing angry, all the 
while, with us, because we insist on explaining these chance expressions 
by the tenor of a long and base life. While drunk with the tempta¬ 
tions of the present hour, men are willing to bow to any Moloch. 
When their friends bury them, they feel what bitter mockery, fifty 
years hence, any epitaph will be, if it cannot record of one living in this 
era some service rendered to the slave! 

How few in public life are strong enough to weather the 
storms of a hostile public opinion! To do that takes a Savo¬ 
narola, a Martin Luther, a William Lloyd Garrison, a Wendell 
Phillips. 

It is true that these motives also do impel to action. Fear 
of ridicule is a whip to keep the individual in line with other 
people. It is fear of ridicule that prods the youngster to do with 
the gang what his conscience balks at. “Following the fash¬ 
ions” probably is a variation of this motive. 

6. The Moral Sentiments: Love of Right and Justice. Most 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


129 

of the motives already considered are egoistic. In them the 
highest regulator of conduct is either self-interest or the ap¬ 
proval or disapproval of our fellows. We have now to consider 
the altruistic motives, those concerned with the welfare of 
others. Among these are included such motives as love of 
right, justice, truth, courage, honor, uprightness, honesty, nobil¬ 
ity of character; and on the negative side hatred of cruelty, 
injustice, dishonesty, selfishness, deceit, slothfulness, oppression, 
tyranny. The kinds of actions to which this group of motives 
leads are those which have our moral approval or disapproval. 
Among the emotions prominent in shaping the sentiments is 
moral indignation. 

Few motives are more frequently appealed to than this. 
Almost every public question has its ethical aspects. The crux 
of the child labor question is the cruelty and injustice of it. 
The struggle between capital and labor that centers around 
organized unions and the “closed shop” involves more than 
matters of mere expediency; it involves matters of right and 
wrong. To what extent do the toilers receive a fair share of 
the products of industry, and to what extent may they work 
together to enforce their demands for better hours, higher 
wages, and improved sanitary conditions? These are important 
aspects of that question. Likewise the distribution of wealth, 
the disfranchisement of the negro in the South, questions of 
taxation, of rate regulation, of the honor system among pris¬ 
oners — all have their ethical side and, therefore, afford oppor¬ 
tunities for appealing to the higher motives. 

There is pathos in this vivid portrayal of the passing of the 
Indian by Joseph Story. The appeal is to our sympathy 
(moral sentiments). 

There is, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken 
our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; 
much which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities; much in 
their characters, which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. 
What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their 


130 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Every- 
where, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear 
the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of 
autumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, 
and they return no more. Two centuries ago, the smoke of their 
wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from 
Hudson’s Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Missis¬ 
sippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang 
through the mountains and the glades. . . . 

But where are they? Where are the villagers, and warriors, and 
youth; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? 
They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence 
has not alone done the mighty work. No, — nor famine, nor war. 
There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which has eaten into 
their heart-cores — a plague, which the touch of the white man com¬ 
municated— a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. 
The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region, which they may now 
call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are pre¬ 
paring for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave 
their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the 
warriors, “few and faint, yet fearless still.” The ashes are cold on 
their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly 
cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is 
upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. 
They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a 
last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; 
they utter no cries; they heave no groans. . . . They know and feel 
that there is for them still one remove further, not distant, nor un¬ 
seen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race. 

Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a fate much 
that we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel 
deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; 
much of pity mingling with indignation; much of doubt and mis¬ 
giving as to the past; much of painful recollections; much of dark 
forebodings. 

7. The AEsthetic Sentiments: Aesthetic Pleasures. As a motive 
of action, this has reference to the pursuit of pleasure through 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


I 3 i 

the senses and to the gratification of our aesthetic tastes. It 
includes our liking for art in all its forms, poetry, drama, fiction, 
oratory, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the 
decorative arts; also our love for the beautiful in nature, such 
as mountain views and other forms of natural scenery. 

Interests like these mould the lives of different people in 
varying degrees. The higher forms of art make their appeal, 
in general, more to the educated than to the ignorant. The 
love of the beautiful seems, in many, dormant if not dead. 
Some forms of art have much wider appeal than others. Mil¬ 
lions will go to the theater, while only hundreds go to the art 
museum. When you advocate in a speech the construction of 
a new auditorium for your school or community, it is largely 
because of the pleasure it will give you in hearing good plays, 
good lectures, and other cultural programs. Your appeal is to 
the aesthetic sentiments or tastes. This would be true also of an 
appeal for a new library or books for an old one. 

Great speakers frequently have the aesthetic tastes highly 
developed. Beecher was a great lover of art and nature, had a 
large collection of stones of his own gathering, and would often 
spend one day a week watching the workers in fine art in New 
York establishments. Robert Ingersoll was a great lover of the 
beautiful and, like his brother, “was with color, form and music 
touched to tears.” With keen appreciation of the value of 
aesthetic pleasures, these men were well fitted to make appeals 
for such things, and often did. 

Ingersoll, in his eulogy of Lincoln, pays this tribute to life in 
the country, such as Lincoln lived. 

It is no advantage to live in a great city, where poverty degrades 
and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, 
and the great forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are more 
poetic than steeples and chimneys. 

In the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and 
setting sun; you become acquainted with the stars and clouds. The 
constellations are your friends. You hear the rain on the roof and 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


132 

listen to the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled by the 
resurrection called Spring, touched and saddened by Autumn — the 
grace and poetry of death. Every field is a picture, a landscape; 
every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought, and every 
forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve your identity— 
your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms; but in the 
city you are only an atom of an aggregation. 

In the country you keep your cheek close to the breast of Nature. 
You are calmed and ennobled by the space, the amplitude and scope 
of earth and sky — by the constancy of the stars. 

8. Negative Motives: Fear, Anger, Hatred, Jealousy. It is 
very doubtful if these motives are to be regarded as having an 
independent status. The feelings which they denote are caused 
by the frustration of desire and have been developed in the 
competitive struggle for existence to give aid to the positive 
values. Fear, for example, is always a fear of something; it 
may be fear for one’s life, or health, or for one’s family; fear of 
losing wealth or social position; or some other fear. It is but 
the negative aspect of positive values, which it is made to serve. 
A child expresses anger when its movements are artificially 
hampered. The grown-up person expresses the same emotion 
when he feels that his pursuit of positive satisfactions is unduly 
interfered with. Similarly, hatred and jealousy are closely con¬ 
nected with the struggle for survival and are aroused by the 
threatened loss of positive values, or of desire defeated. The 
merchant may come to hate his competitor in business as the 
competitor continues to make inroads into his field; clearly, 
the real motive operating is the desire for gain or wealth, and 
all that wealth will buy. The lover is jealous of his rival be¬ 
cause he is threatened with the loss of the affections of the one 
he loves. 

In all these negative motives it is interference with the quest 
of positive values or satisfactions that causes the emotion. 
That does not mean that these negative motives are any less 
real. They are simply the other side of the shield. They may 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


*33 


be appealed to as directly and effectively as the positive ones. 
Iago appealed to Othello’s jealousy, which in effect was to show 
that Othello was threatened with the loss of Desdemona’s love. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt in his acceptance speech before the 
Democratic National Convention, previously referred to, ap¬ 
pealed to our fear of radicalism (negative motive), which in 
effect is fear for our economic and social security. This fear 
operates perhaps most strongly with the possessing classes, and 
Roosevelt’s appeal may be construed as a bid for their support. 

The failure of Republican leaders to solve our troubles may de¬ 
generate into unreasoning radicalism. ... To meet in reaction the 
danger of radicalism is to invite disaster. Reaction is no barrier to 
the radical. It is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that 
is to offer a program of reconstruction. 

The groups of human wants or motives treated here are not 
all-inclusive. Human wants are almost infinite in number. 
The classification given is comprehensive enough to open up the 
subject and to put the speaker on his guard to interpret his 
message in terms of vital human interests — vital especially to 
the audience he is addressing. Failure to do this concretely 
and vividly sounds the death knell of many a persuasive speech. 

Tact and Technique in Want Appeal. Motives range up 
and down the ethical scale. Some are high; some are low. 
Some also are strong, and some are weak. No very definite 
rules can be given for the selection of motives. It is safe to 
say that the strongest motives consistent with good taste should 
be appealed to. In his addresses in England, 1863, Beecher 
appealed strongly to the money motive, which doubtless oper¬ 
ated most strongly both with merchants and with laborers in 
the industrial centers. What he said in effect was this: “You 
are interested in selling finished goods to America. Free men 
consume more than slaves. A free South will be a much better 
customer than a slave South. You are interested therefore in 
the triumph of the Northern cause.” Beecher also made it 


134 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


plain that he knew the cause of human liberty was dear to the 
hearts of Englishmen. He made his listeners feel that in sup¬ 
porting the cause of the North they were moved by the loftiest 
sentiments that can actuate human beings. Everybody finds 
satisfaction in the feeling that he is moved to action by lofty 
considerations of liberty and justice, and especially in having 
his neighbors and fellow men think so. What Beecher did was 
to appeal to the strongest motives possible, and then connect 
the lower motives with higher ones. That is good technique. 

In appealing to human wants, it is best not to make your 
method obtrusive. The same principle applies here as else¬ 
where: conceal your art. It is not necessary to say, “ Ladies 
and Gentlemen, in this speech I shall appeal freely to your 
patriotism, your love of children, and your reputation.” In 
fact, to put it in this form is to make it sound ridiculous. Go 
about your business, make your appeal, accomplish your aim. 
It is not necessary to say anything about your method. The 
important thing is to show your audience that the course you 
want them to pursue is in line with their best interests and will 
yield handsome returns in the satisfaction of their fundamental 
wants. 

In Conclusion. This survey of the impelling motives of action 
will serve at least to open up the subject to you. It is a big 
subject and one of sovereign importance to the speaker. The 
trouble with so many persuasive speeches — most of them in 
fact — is that they are not made to touch our lives vitally and 
vividly, and so they do not grip. The alert speaker will seek to 
link up his subject with the life interests of his listeners. He 
will be constantly questioning himself as to how this may best 
be done. If he is advocating a certain course of action or line 
of conduct, he will aim to discover how this will favorably 
affect the lives of his audience. Will it help them to play safe, 
to conserve health, to escape hazards, to prevent disease? 
Will it affect the welfare of their family, friends, community, 
state, nation, or the world? Will it promote their personal 


MOTIVATION: WANT APPEAL 


135 

influence or power, socially, politically, professionally? Will 
it contribute to personality development? Will it be profitable 
or costly? Is there an ethical side to it? Is it right or wrong, 
just or unjust? Will it affect their reputation or standing in 
the community? How will it affect their opportunity to enjoy 
art in all its forms? In short, what fundamental human 
desires will it help to gratify? What satisfactions will it 
give? 

These are the tests that should be applied to every subject, 
and every subject worth talking about lends itself to some form 
of want appeal. Civilization is built up to gratify human 
desires and satisfy human wants, and speeches of the persuasive 
kind are made presumably to promote a fairer distribution of 
life’s satisfactions. 

EXERCISES 

1. Study the lecture, “Acres of Diamonds.” Formulate a purpose 
sentence for the speech; also state the central idea. Observe the 
emphasis which Conwell places on sympathetic understanding of 
human wants. What relation does this idea have to the subject 
matter of this chapter? According to Conwell, a business man who 
studies people’s wants and tries to satisfy them will be successful. 
What about a speaker who studies people’s wants and then shows 
that what he advocates will satisfy those wants? 

Criticize the speech from the point of view of want appeal. Also 
from the point of view of style, considering informality, diction, 
sentence structure, direct quotations, use of questions, and other 
matters of good style. Make a list of the forms of support. Which 
are most effective? Is the speech convincing? How would you 
classify it? 

2. Look through a copy of the Ladies' Home Journal or some other 
women’s magazine. Make a list of the different departments in 
the magazine and show how each aims to satisfy certain definite 
wants in the lives of women, such as health, comfort, attractive¬ 
ness, bringing up children. 

3. Analyze an advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post or some 
other magazine from the point of view of motives or want appeal. 


136 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

4. Test your next speech for the appeal it makes to impelling 
motives. Is the appeal concrete and vivid? 

5. Report in writing on a speech read for want-appeal analysis. 
What motives are appealed to? Is the appeal vivid and effective? 
Does the speech grip? 


READINGS 

Speeches 

“Acres of Diamonds,” by Russell H. Conwell. 1 
“Farming in Illinois,” by Robert Ingersoll ( Ingersoll , Vol. I). 
“Public Duty of Educated Men,” by George W. Curtis {Mod. El.: I, 
Vol. VII). 

“The Scholar in a Republic,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. II). 
“Liverpool Speech,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: IV). 

References 

DeWitt Henry Parker: Human Values (1931). 

Harry Allen Overstreet: Influencing Human Behavior (1925), Chap. II. 
James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), Chap. XIX. 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chap. V. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Eflective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. V. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chap. XI. 


1 This speech appears on page 379 of this volume. 


CHAPTER X 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 

For oral presentation, suggestion is more powerful than reasoning. — 
Walter Dill Scott 

We have seen in the preceding chapter how important is the 
direct want appeal in influencing conduct. That is perhaps 
the most potent form of motivation. In this chapter, we shall 
treat another form of motivation, which frequently involves 
indirect want appeal. This method is known as suggestion. 

Suggestion as a Method of Persuasion. Suggestion is an 
indirect method of persuasion, which consists in presenting 
ideas in such a way as to win for them uncritical acceptance. 
A speaker uses suggestion when he aims to influence behavior, 
not by telling people directly what he would like to have them 
believe or do, and giving reasons, but by presenting ideas in 
such a way as to lead people to draw for themselves the desired 
conclusions spontaneously. He does this usually by touching 
off familiar behavior patterns with which the listeners identify 
the course of conduct advocated by the speaker. We accept 
the new when it is brought into line with behavior patterns 
already approved. 

The fertile oratorical mind [says Bain] is one that can identify 
a case in hand with a great number of the strongest beliefs of an 
audience; and more especially with those that seem, at first sight, to 
have no connection with the point to be carried. The discovery of 
identity in diversity is never more called for, than in attempts to 
move men to adopt some unwonted course of proceeding. ... To 
be a persuasive speaker, it is necessary to have vividly present to the 
view all the leading impulses and convictions of the persons ad- 

137 



138 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

dressed, and to be ready to catch at every point of identity between 
these and the proposition suggested for their adoption. 1 

If we would understand the extent to which this method is 
used by successful speakers, we have only to examine their 
speeches. We shall find that the men who have been masters 
in communicating ideas to mixed audiences, or in “humanizing 
knowledge,” depend on suggestion much more than on logical 
argument. They do this largely by the use of illustrations. 
While suggestion is most effective with popular audiences — 
that is, persons who are not disposed to be critical — it is 
effective in some measure with all audiences. 

Marc Antony’s address to the Romans at Caesar’s funeral is 
generally regarded as one of the best examples we have of sug¬ 
gestion in speaking. If you will refer to it, you will observe that 
the speaker studiously avoids any direct statements as to what 
he wants his hearers to feel and do. He calls to their minds, 
on the other hand, incidents in Caesar’s life which will arouse 
the feelings he wants to arouse. Finally, by exhibiting the 
bloody garment in which Caesar was assassinated, he arouses 
intense emotions and stirs the mob to mutiny and rage. He 
does not say — what is really in his mind — “ Caesar was a 
great general and a great statesman. The conspirators who 
killed him are traitors and should be punished.” No. He 
says of Caesar: 

He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 

Whose ransom did the general coffers fill: 

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? 

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: 

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 

And so he leads them on by indirection and makes them 
draw their own conclusions about the virtues of Caesar and 
1 Quoted in James Winans: Public Speaking (1915), p. 331. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


139 


the treason of the conspirators — the very conclusions which 
Antony wanted them to draw from the beginning. 

Observe also how carefully he avoids anything that may 
arouse antagonism or a critical attitude. A critical attitude is 
inimical to suggestion. 

Man’s Susceptibility to Suggestion. All men are susceptible 
to suggestion, most of us much more so than we realize. We 
like to think that we are rational beings, and that we order our 
lives by carefully weighing reasons for and against any line of 
action. We do on occasion reason things out, but not as often 
as we think we do. Most persons are mentally indolent and 
lazy, and as Joshua Reynolds affirmed, “There is no expedient 
to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of think¬ 
ing.” Woodrow Wilson used to say that not one man in a 
thousand is governed by his mind. We are all creatures of 
habit, custom, emotion, imitation, suggestion. These are more 
often the guiding processes of our lives. As Sam Walter Foss 

puts it, men are p rone to g Q ft blind 

Along the calf paths of the mind. 

And work away from sun to sun, 

To do what other men have done. 


If some one were to ask us why we belong to a certain political 
party, or why we attend a certain church, or why we go to 
some college instead of to some other, or why we wear clothes 
of a certain cut, or shoes of a certain style, most of us could give 
no valid reasons. We should have to admit that we belong to a 
certain political party because our fathers did; we belong to a 
certain church because we were brought up in it; go to a cer¬ 
tain college because our friends do; and wear the kinds of 
clothes we do because it is the fashion. Hardly a man has 
reasoned himself into a religious denomination; and they are 
few who have reasoned themselves into a political party. Our 
lives are ordered largely through social contact with our fellows. 
We catch opinions in much the same way that we do smallpox 


140 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


or measles. Man is not essentially a reasoning being, but a 
suggestible one. 

In the words of Boris Sidis: 

Man is often defined as a social animal. This definition is no 
doubt true, but it conveys little information as to the psychical state 
of each individual within society. There exists another definition 
which claims to give insight into the nature of man, and that is the 
well-known ancient view that man is a rational animal; but this 
definition breaks down as soon as we come to test it by facts of life, 
for it scarcely holds true of the vast multitudes of mankind. Not 
sociality, not rationality, but suggestibility is what characterizes the 
average specimen of humanity, for man is essentially a suggestible 
animal. 

The Meaning of Suggestion. Sidis defines suggestion and 
suggestibility as follows: 

By suggestion is meant the intrusion into the mind of an idea; met 
with more or less opposition by the person; accepted uncritically at 
last; and realized unreflectively, almost automatically. 

By suggestibility is meant that peculiar state of mind which is 
favorable to suggestion. 1 

According to Walter Dill Scott, suggestion is used to denote 
actions which are marked by two characteristics: 

(1) The thought or action must be suggested by some external stimulus 
— This external stimulus may be a spoken sentence, a gesture , a look, 
a ringing of a bell, the sight of an object, etc. 

(2) The second characteristic of suggestion is that the idea suggested 
results in action or belief without the ordinary amount of deliberation or 
criticism. There is a narrowing of consciousness, and the idea sug¬ 
gested does not arouse any, or at least an adequate amount of re¬ 
sistance. 2 

Characteristics of Suggestion. In our endeavor to under¬ 
stand the processes of suggestion as applied to persuasive speak- 

1 Psychology of Suggestion (1898), p. 15. 

2 Psychology of Public Speaking (1926), p. 154. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


141 

ing, we have to consider a number of things. The first is that 
suggestion is a process of communicating ideas. The ideas may 
be communicated by any one of the agents of expression: formal 
language, voice, or gestures. What is needed is an external 
stimulus suggesting the action or belief. 

The second thing to note about the process of suggestion is 
that the distinctive characteristic of a suggestive idea is that it is 
realized in belief or action uncritically. According to Miinster- 
berg, “A suggestion is, we might say, at first, an idea which 
has a power in our mind to suppress the opposite idea. A sug¬ 
gestion is an idea which in itself is not different from other 
ideas, but the way in which it takes possession of the mind 
reduces the chances of any opposite ideas; it inhibits them.” 1 
“A suggestive idea,” says Keatinge, “is one which exercises a 
disintegrating influence on the mind in such a way that critical 
and inhibitory ideas are rendered ineffective.” 2 “Verbal sug¬ 
gestion produces belief by a process that is not consciously 
inferential at all.” 3 These statements should suffice to make 
clear the distinction between suggestion and the ordinary argu¬ 
mentative process. In suggestion the usual associative tenden¬ 
cies of an idea are suppressed: there is no balancing of reasons, 
pro and con. If the suggestive idea accomplishes its purpose, 
it results in belief, or motor tendencies to action immediately 
and uncritically. 

Distinction between the Associative Value of an Idea and 
Its Suggestive Force. The associative tendency of an idea is 
not necessarily a tendency to belief or action. A person may, 
for example, receive an offer to go to a distant city at a larger 
salary than he is now drawing. The original tendency of the 
idea is to realize itself in action; but the field is not clear. A 
train of associative ideas is called up, some for the proposition, 
others against it. The increase in salary is favorable; so are the 

1 Psychotherapy (1909), p. 86. 

2 Suggestion in Education (Second Edition, 1907), p. 54. 

3 James Sully: Human Mind , p. 498. 


142 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


increased dignity and power of the proffered position, as well 
as the social and other advantages which those things carry 
with them. But there is the contrariant idea of leaving a host 
of friends and acquaintances, of leaving one’s native city with 
all its associations and attachments. Opportunities for invest¬ 
ment may not be so good in the new location; the climate may 
not be so favorable. It is clear that, while pondering the propo¬ 
sition may call up a host of associated ideas, the only effect 
may be a greater insight into the situation, a fuller appreciation 
of the advantages and disadvantages of making the change. 
The associative tendency of the idea, in other words, may be 
not at all toward belief or action. 

On the other hand it is characteristic of an idea so far as it 
is suggestive to realize itself in belief or action, “ quite apart from 
insight or understanding. ... If the resulting train of associ¬ 
ation is abnormal so that adverse ideas and impulses seem to 
be non-existent, this is due to the suggestive force of the idea , 
and an idea is suggestive insofar as the train of association which 
it initiates is partial, or in other words, insofar as it realizes 
itself notwithstanding the existence within the total system of 
possible inhibitory ideas.” 1 

Methods of Using Suggestion in Speaking. We are now in 
a position to consider some examples of how suggestion may 
be applied in public address for persuasive ends. 

There are several methods of using suggestion in speaking. 
Both the speech itself and the speaker may be considered as 
sources of suggestion. So far as suggestion is derived from the 
speech materials or forms of support, one method stands out 
above all others in importance, which we shall now con¬ 
sider. 

A. Suggestion through Transference of Feeling. The most 
important form of suggestion, growing out of the speech itself, 
is the one that involves a transference of feeling from one idea 

1 Maurice Walter Keatinge: Suggestion in Education (Second Edition, 
1907 ), P- 31. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


143 

or thought pattern to another} The process is perhaps best ex¬ 
plained in terms of belief gradients or belief potentials. The 
transference of feeling must be from a belief of high potential 
to one of lower potential. A belief or action tendency of a 
high potential cannot be changed by suggesting a belief or 
action tendency of a lower potential. We can best understand 
this by taking a concrete case. The following is probably as 
good an example of this form of suggestion as can be found. 
It was applied to an individual, to be sure, but it might just 
as well have been applied to any uncritical pioneer audience 
familiar with flintlock rifles. 

In 1816 Henry Clay voted for a new Compensation Act of Congress. 
It aroused a tornado of popular wrath. Not even the great Commoner 
could stand against this, and sagaciously resolved to try to weather it. 
Meeting a staunch supporter who had turned against him, he said: 

“Jack, you have a good flintlock rifle, haven’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Did it ever flash in the pan?” 

“Once it did, but only once.” 

“What did you do with it? Did you throw it away?” 

“No, I picked the flint and tried it again.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Clay, “I have flashed only once — on this com¬ 
pensation bill — and are you going to throw me away?” 

“No,” cried the hunter, touched in his tenderest part. “No, Mr. 
Clay. I will pick the flint and try you again.” 

Note what happens. The man addressed accepts the com¬ 
parison made, and his strong conviction that it is not sensible 
to throw away a rifle because it fails to go off once — a perfectly 
familiar thought pattern with a high belief potential — is trans¬ 
ferred to the idea of Clay’s failure to vote correctly on the Com¬ 
pensation Bill —a thought pattern not so familiar and involving 
a belief of low gradient. The comparison is in the form of a 
figurative analogy, and is from the accepted to the unaccepted. 

1 For this phrasing, I am indebted to Franklin H. Knower of the Depart¬ 
ment of Speech, University of Minnesota. 


144 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Suppose Clay had used logical argument to win over his old 
friend. Is it likely that he would have been so successful? 
Observe that Clay is not addressing a critical mind; also that 
very few minds are critical. Note also that an uncritical accep¬ 
tance is here won for a hostile idea. 

The effect of the following passage from a speech of the late 
Senator Robert La Follette is one of suggestion (U. S. Senate, 
May 23, 1911): 

Nothing is ever really settled until it is settled right. It may seem 
to be settled. We may think in our imperfect human way that we 
have disposed of it, but it will come back to confront us. It is God’s 
law of everlasting righteousness demanding judgment. As the law of 
gravity always pulls to make things plumb, so the eternal law of right 
goes on and on forever, exercising its tremendous unending, im¬ 
mutable decree that right shall prevail. 

The illustration used not only illumines the subject, but it 
tends to produce conviction. The feeling that gravitation op¬ 
erates at all times to make things plumb tends to be transferred 
to the idea that, in the long run, righteousness is the only stable 
foundation on which to build. There is involved here also 
suggestion through authority (“God’s law of everlasting right¬ 
eousness”), which is treated later in this chapter. 

The following illustration is a good example of how truth 
may be brought home by using the technique, “Put yourself 
in the other fellow’s place.” It is an example of the “imagined 
situation.” It embodies familiar and vivid references to ex¬ 
perience. It is also a good example of suggestion — of how 
one may take a short cut to win immediate belief or action for 
an idea. 

A young country doctor was trying to educate his patients to send 
in as few night calls as possible, and to pay double for them when they 
were used. How to do it. Observe an example of his method. One 
night a wealthy farmer telephoned him to come out and see a member 
of his household. As the doctor was leaving, the farmer inquired the 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


145 


cost of the visit. When told that the charge was six dollars he ex¬ 
claimed: 

“ Six dollars! That’s just double what the old doctor ever charged.” 

“This is a night visit,” was the calm reply. “It would have been 
only three if you had called me any time during the day.” 

“But six dollars for one visit is outrageous, young man!” 

“Very well,” responded the doctor. “I will make it three on one 
condition.” 

“All right, name it!” returned the farmer. 

“That condition is that when I need another load of hay I may call 
you up at ten o’clock at night; that you will get your man out, hitch 
up your team and bring in the hay inside of two hours, and that you 
will do so at the regular price and without a whimper or a complaint.” 

“Say,” interrupted the farmer, “you’ve got me on the hay argu¬ 
ment. Don’t need to go any further. You are all right.” 

The method here used is essentially the same as the one in 
the previous illustration. The doctor selects a thought pattern 
perfectly familiar to the farmer and one having associated with 
it a feeling of deep conviction; namely, that it is a nuisance 
to get up in the middle of the night to deliver a load of hay. 
This conviction is transferred to the idea or thought pattern of 
the doctor’s having to get up at all hours of the night to make 
professional calls. The farmer accepts the comparison uncrit¬ 
ically. The comparison must he accepted if the suggested idea is 
to hear fruition in behavior. It may be said that the comparison 
here is from the accepted to the unaccepted. 

The Use of Illustrations. In the examples given, it will be 
seen that the force of the suggestion in each instance depended 
on the use of an illustration (analogy). So far as suggestion 
in speaking derives from the speech itself, as distinguished from 
the speaker, this is almost invariably true: the suggestion takes 
some form of illustration or example , either analogy, some figure 
of speech like the metaphor and simile, or the anecdote, fable, 
or parable. The parables in the New Testament are good 
examples of suggestion. The pictorial element in speaking — 
furnished largely by illustrations — is in large measure the sug- 


146 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

gestive element. An analysis of our great speeches will make 
this plain. 

There is a psychological reason for this. A suggested idea 
depends for its effectiveness largely on what it meets with in 
the consciousness of the listener. “Every normal suggestion/’ 
says Allport, “builds up its attitude upon some deep-lying 
reaction tendency already present. Interests, emotions, senti¬ 
ments, derived drives, and innate prepotent reactions serve as 
basis.” 1 When Clay met the old hunter and compared his own 
mistake in voting for the Compensation Bill to a flash in the 
pan of a flintlock rifle, he knew that he was referring to a very 
familiar and vivid experience in the life of the South Carolinian. 
When the doctor proposed that he be allowed to call on the 
farmer for a load of hay at any hour of the night, the farmer 
had vividly brought home to him what a doctor must go through 
in answering night calls. A suggestion depends for its effect 
on setting of a familiar thought or emotional reaction in a con¬ 
flicting pattern of reaction tendencies, thus narrowing the field 
of consciousness and resulting in a motor attitude or action 
uncritically and at once. For this purpose, thought patterns 
embodying universal experiences are the most dependable, espe¬ 
cially with large audiences. The experience referred to must 
be a familiar and vivid one with the audience addressed. As 
elsewhere noted, it is the essence of an illustration that it 
embodies experiences that are vivid and familiar. It is through 
illustrations also that we get vivid comparisons between the 
unaccepted and the accepted, between the unfelt and the felt, 
comparisons which will be found to underlie most of the exam¬ 
ples of suggestion in speaking. 

A good example of suggestion is the following illustration from 
Lincoln’s “Springfield Speech.” Observe how the illustration is 
adapted to a pioneer community and how vividly it must have 
come home to the farmers and woodsmen of early Illinois. 
Doubtless the illustration was intended for the less critical part 
1 Floyd H. Allport, Social Psychology (1924), p. 245. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


147 

of his audience. The illustration was used to drive home the 
point of conspiracy of certain national Democratic leaders, 
after a somewhat involved argument on the subject. 

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are 
the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, 
different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different 
times and places, and by different workmen, — Stephen, Franklin, 
Roger, and James, for instance, — and we see these timbers joined 
together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, 
all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and 
proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective 
places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaf¬ 
folding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame 
exactly fitted or prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case 
we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and 
Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and 
all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first 
blow was struck. 

Observe once more that Lincoln in this illustration chooses 
a thought pattern peculiarly familiar to an audience of pioneer 
farmers, and involving a belief of high potential; namely, that 
timbers fashioned like the ones Lincoln described must have 
been prepared by men working together in accordance with a 
prearranged plan. The feeling of conviction associated with 
this is here transferred to the idea of conspiracy among the 
Democratic leaders — a thought pattern much more involved, 
much less familiar and carrying with it only a vague belief of 
low potential. The-comparison is from the familiar to the un¬ 
familiar. It is probable that thousands of Lincoln’s followers, 
who were wholly incapable of following a logical argument on 
the sinister import of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the Dred 
Scott Decision, could understand and carry in mind the illus¬ 
tration Lincoln gave them, and be properly suspicious of men 
who could, working independently, fashion political timbers 
that fitted like the ones Lincoln described. 


148 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

When Bruce Barton wants to impress upon his hearers that 
a product needs to be continually advertised, even when well 
known, he does not argue the proposition. A simple illustration 
serves his purpose better. 

Speaking of the advance advertising man for the old-fash¬ 
ioned circus, Mr. Barton says: 

It was his function to precede the circus into various communities, 
distribute tickets to the editor, put up on the barns pictures of the 
bearded lady and the man-eating snakes, and finally to get in touch 
with the proprietor of some store and persuade him to purchase the 
space on either side of the elephant for his advertisement in the 
parade. 

Coming one day to a crossroads town, our friend found that there 
was only one store. The proprietor did not receive him enthusi¬ 
astically. “Why should I advertise?” he demanded. “I have been 
here for twenty years. There isn’t a man, woman or child around 
these parts that doesn’t know where I am and what I sell.” The 
advertising man answered very promptly (because in our business if we 
hesitate we are lost), and he said to the proprietor, pointing across the 
street, “What is that building over there?” The proprietor answered, 
“That is the Methodist Episcopal Church.” The advertising man 
said, “How long has that been here?” The proprietor said, “Oh, I 
don’t know; seventy-five years probably. ” “ And yet, ” exclaimed the 
advertising man, “they ring the church bell every Sunday morning.” 1 

The effect here is had through suggestion. The feeling or 
conviction that it is proper to ring a church bell every Sunday 
morning, even if the church is old and well known, is trans¬ 
ferred to the idea that it is proper to advertise a store even if 
old and well known. 

James Beck, who interpreted the La Follette progressive 
campaign of 1924 as an attack on the Constitution of the 
United States, gets a vivid effect through suggestion with this 
illustration : 2 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), 
P- 358. 

2 Ibid., p. 431. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


149 

The La Follette party assault reminds me of an incident that 
happened to me many years ago when I made my first visit to 
Switzerland. I was in the lovely valley of Lauterbrunnen. Shut in 
by towering mountains of eternal granite, it is noted for a wonderful 
echo. The four notes of the common chord were sounded on an Alpine 
horn, and as the tones reverberated from cliff to cliff they inter¬ 
mingled until they sounded like the strains of a majestic organ. Then 
a little brass cannon was fired. The result was startling. The smoke 
drifted across my eyes and obscured the snowy summits of the Bernese 
Alps, while the echo was so deafening that it truly seemed as if the 
mountains had fallen from their bases into the valleys and primeval 
chaos had come again. Soon the smoke cleared from my eyes and the 
reverberations died away on the distant snow fields, and outlined 
against the infinite blue, untouched and unimpaired, was the white 
summit of the Jungfrau. 

Similarly, we had last autumn for many months a popular upheaval 
that for a time seemed to obscure our vision and deafen our ears with 
its terrifying noise; but as the smoke of the battle cleared and the 
noise of the tumult died away, there was outlined against the infinite 
blue of the future, like a snowclad mountain upon a pedestal of eternal 
granite, the Constitution of the United States. 

There is suggestive persuasion in the following fable from 
! Beecher, illustrating the general idea that we find what we 
| bring: 

A cold cinder and a burning lamp started out, one day, to see what 
they could find. The cinder came back and wrote in its journal that 
the whole world was dark. It did not find a place wherever it went, 

I in which there was light. Everywhere was darkness. The lamp when 
it came back, wrote in its journal, “Wherever I went it was light. I 
did not find any darkness in my journey. The whole world was 
light.” What was the difference? The lamp carried light with it, 
and illumined everything about it. The dead cinder carried no light, 
and found none. 

The Use of Figures of Speech . Figures of speech, another 
form of illustration, constitute a favorite device of successful 
speakers for getting effects through suggestion. The following 





THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


I S° 

simile from the Autocrat has a weighty suggestion for keeping 
out of certain kinds of controversies. 

If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, would I reply? Not I. 
Do you think I don’t understand what my friend, the Professor, long 
ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy? 

Don’t know what that means? — Well I will tell you. You know, 
that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a 
pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would 
stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes 
fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it. 

The conclusion of Bryan’s famed “ Cross of Gold Speech” em¬ 
ploys figures of speech that have an intensely emotional asso¬ 
ciation, and are therefore strongly suggestive. They touch off 
a powerful emotional pattern in referring to the crucifixion. 

If they dare to come out into the open field and defend the gold 
standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the utmost. Having 
behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported 
by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers 
everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying 
to them, You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown 
of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. 

Enough instances have been given to show the large part 
that illustrations play in suggestive persuasive speaking. The 
principal form that suggestion takes in speaking is a comparison 
between the belief or action sought to be induced and some 
belief or action familiar to the audience and accepted by them 
as sound. If the comparison is accepted, there is transference 
of feeling from one idea or belief to the other. The comparison 
is usually implied rather than expressed. This method of per¬ 
suasion is, with the majority of people, more effective than 
logical reasoning, and far more widely used by great speakers. 
Attention has been called to the extensive use of illustrations 
by our popular orators, most of which have in them a large 
element of suggestion. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


I5i 

Importance of Choosing Right Comparisons. One or two 
observations should be made on these examples. It is clear 
that the effect of suggestion on the hearers depends largely on 
the thought pattern or belief set which is suggested to them 
or recalled for them. The belief set must be one of high poten¬ 
tial; that is, one accepted by the audience without question, 
and one which does not arouse opposing ideas. This is in 
accordance with Munsterberg’s statement that a suggestion 
depends for its effect on the “way in which it takes posession 
of the mind” and “reduces the chances of any opposite ideas.” 
If, for instance, in the first illustration given, Henry Clay had 
suggested to the old hunter that he (Clay) should have at least 
the privilege of a sheep-killing dog — a second chance — the 
effect might have been different, depending on the hunter’s 
attitude on whether a dog caught killing sheep ought to have 
a second chance. 

A second thing to note is that the audience must accept 
uncritically the comparison which the illustration embodies. 
If the farmer, for example, had felt that being called upon to 
deliver a load of hay in the middle of the night was not at 
all like the case of the doctor being called upon to visit a 
patient at the same hour, the suggestion would have had no 
effect. It was the uncritical acceptance of the comparison 
flashed upon him which won him over. Suggestion in this 
form is not effective if there is serious doubt or deep-seated con¬ 
viction in regard to the belief to be established or act to be 
performed. When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, Beecher 
said it had scattered the Northern negroes in terror “like 
partridges hunted on the mountains.” This might have won 
sympathy from the people of the North; it would not have 
had much effect on Southern slave owners. In the case of 
unaccepted beliefs, or disputed propositions, the critical judg¬ 
ment must first be satisfied, assuming the presence of people 
in which it operates. Lincoln in his “ Springfield Speech ” argued 
at length in support of his charge of conspiracy among national 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


152 

leaders; then, he flashed conviction on his audience by the use 
of his timber illustration. 

B. Repetition as a Source of Suggestion. It is possible to 
use restatement or repetition with suggestive effect, but it can 
hardly be said that it is a device often used in speaking. It is 
much more important in advertising than in public address. 
If it is to be effective, two conditions must be present: the 
resistance to be overcome must not be strong or doubt deep- 
rooted; the time element must have a chance to enter as a 
factor. In advertising a product, the popular attitude at first 
is likely to be one of indifference. Repeat the merits of the 
article with picture words of popular appeal, sing its praises 
often enough, and we shall eventually believe that it must be 
all right; and where we see it, we may buy it. It may take 
a long time for the suggestion to sink in. 

In speaking, we may use this method to advantage if the re¬ 
sistance to be overcome is not too strong. The most striking 
example that I have known of this was that of a distinguished 
preacher in a sermon on the sinking of the Titanic. Many 
people at the time were led to question why such things could 
be in a world ruled over by a beneficent deity. This minister 
felt impelled to offer an explanation, and chose as his theme, 
God Was There. In the course of the sermon lasting perhaps 
forty minutes, he must have repeated this statement at least 
twenty times, or it may have been oftener. The suggestive 
effect was doubtless strong, especially with those who accepted 
the leadership of this man, and who were not disposed to be 
overcritical. The effect on me was to impress the thought indel¬ 
ibly on my memory, which suggests that this device not only 
impresses ideas on the mind, but also makes them stick there. 

If used with art and discretion, the method is effective. It 
may be worthy of more cultivation than it has received. The 
danger of it is that it may be a source of boredom or offense if 
not used tactfully. Certain it is that it will not remove any 
great doubt from critical minds, and it may antagonize. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


I 53 

Slogans depend for their effectiveness on repetition as well 
as on the character of the appeal. Political slogans have been 
known to win elections. “ The Full Dinner Pail,” “ Prosperity,” 
have been potent factors in Republican victories. “He Kept 
Us Out of War” elected Wilson president in 1916. “Eventually, 
Why Not Now” has been a slogan to reckon with in the flour 
industry. All these depend on repetition, as well as on popular 
appeal, for their effectiveness. All of them have been built up 
through long periods of time. 

Rendering an Audience Suggestible. Suggestibility has ref¬ 
erence to that mental disposition which is favorable to sugges¬ 
tion. It is measured by the readiness of a subject to accept 
uncritically those propositions for which belief or action is 
sought by suggestion. Suggestibility to some degree is found 
in all normal persons, but varies greatly with different indi¬ 
viduals, and is considerably affected by certain conditions. It 
is found in its most perfect form in the state of hypnotism, in 
which suggestions of all sorts are received and acted upon un¬ 
critically. It is greater in children than in adults, and greater 
in men accustomed to obey than in those accustomed to com¬ 
mand. Persons that are educated, cultured, and well informed 
are less suggestible than those who are uncultured, uneducated, 
and ignorant. “The least degree of suggestibility is that of a 
wide-awake, self-reliant man of settled convictions, possessing 
a large store of systematically organized knowledge which he 
habitually brings to bear in criticism of all statements made 
to him.” 1 

From these facts we should naturally infer that suggestion 
is more effective with popular audiences than with others. It 
is unmistakably so. While some instances of suggestion are to 
be found in congressional and parliamentary oratory, they are 
few compared with the number found in popular addresses. 
The great masters of suggestion are our great popular orators 
— Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Ingersoll, 

1 William MacDougall: Introduction to Social Psychology (1926), p. 98. 


154 THE art of effective speaking 

Abraham Lincoln, George W. Curtis, William Jennings Bryan. 
An examination of their addresses will reveal an astoundingly 
large number of suggestive illustrations and other forms of 
suggestion; while one is likely to find but very few intricate 
logical processes. The student of suggestion in speaking is 
referred to the addresses of these men for a variety of examples 
of suggestive speaking. 

Let us now consider what steps a speaker may take to render 
an audience receptive to his message, and win for his views 
favorable attention. 

A. The Psychological Crowd. It is not our purpose here to 
discuss at length the psychology of the crowd. Much of that 
is still in the controversial stage. The two authorities who have 
given the subject most careful thought are not able to agree 
as to what really happens when a group of people becomes a 
so-called crowd. We know pretty well, however, some things 
that do happen, and we may take advantage of that knowledge 
in managing an audience. 

We know from experience, for example, that it is much easier 
to talk effectively to an audience if its members are sitting 
close together than if they are scattered. The reason is that 
each individual in a compact group observes more closely what 
his neighbors do and how they react to what is being said. Each 
can observe not only the more overt actions of the group, such 
as clapping of hands, laughing, hissing, and other signs of 
approval and disapproval, but even the facial expressions of 
those about him and their general attitude to the sentiments 
expressed by the speaker. The result is that each individual 
tends to be greatly influenced in his responses to the speaker 
by the responses which he sees others are making all about 
him. If they applaud, he will applaud; if they laugh, he will 
laugh; and if they hiss, he will probably hiss. The herd in¬ 
stinct in all of us tends to make us do as the group does, so far 
as we can observe what it does. So it comes about that the 
group tends to become homogeneous, more or less of one mind, 



MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


I 55 

and uniform in reactions to the speaker addressing it. As for 
the individual member of the crowd, he is fortified by the 
thought that what he does has the approval of the group, and 
he is induced to express himself freely. The obvious advantage 
to the speaker is that while he still continues to address a group, 
it is essentially a group with one mind, and that a suggesti¬ 
ble one. 

Not all groups convert into a psychological crowd, although 
many groups may be so converted. Much depends on the char¬ 
acter of the group, and more on the speaker. 

B. Audience Responses. From what has already been said, 
it is plain that an audience may be made more suggestible by 
having its members act in unison, either in response to the 
speaker or otherwise. It is here that humor becomes a potent 
device for the speaker and fulfills one of its greatest functions. 
There is no more effective device for getting audience responses 
favorable to the speaker than a judicious use of humor. The 
trouble is that there is such a temptation to use it that many 
speakers abuse it. They will drag it into the speech for its own 
sake, without its having any relation to the message to be 
brought home. Especially is there a tendency at the beginning 
of a speech to abuse the story or anecdote in this way, and 
for the very good reason that it is the easiest way to get some 
kind of audience response. The skillful speaker will seek to 
avoid the abuse of so excellent a device. Humor in the intro¬ 
duction to a speech is to be commended for most occasions, 
and the speaker who has the art to introduce it in such a way 
as to serve his purpose and make it seem to spring naturally 
from the treatment of his subject has made a good beginning. 
In this respect, a speech well begun is half done. 

It is worth noting that a great evangelist like Billy Sunday 
has with him a great singer, who not only can sing, but who 
can also lead the crowd in congregational singing. This means 
definite audience responses that pave the way for more of such 
responses when the speaker begins his address. We should not 


156 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

overlook the fact that singing is a highly emotional performance, 
and stirs not only those who participate, but also those who 
listen. A great singer, therefore, renders an audience suggestible 
not only through overt audience responses, but also through 
stirring the emotions. And this leads us to consider still another 
way to make an audience suggestible. 

C. Suggestibility and Emotional Appeal. It is well known 
that one of the best ways to make an audience suggestible — 
favorable for receiving suggestion — is to stir in them emotions 
favorable to the speaker and his purpose. Man is much like 
metal. A cold piece of steel is not very susceptible to moulding 
influences; but heat it white hot and it becomes soft and pli¬ 
able, and may be bent or moulded into almost any shape. So 
with human beings. As long as an audience remains cold or 
indifferent toward the speaker’s message, and untouched by 
emotion, the audience is not likely to be very tractable, or 
susceptible to any influences that the speaker may bring to 
bear upon them. But once arouse their feelings or emotions 
favorably and, like metal when heated, they become soft and 
pliable, easily moved and moulded — that is, they become sug¬ 
gestible. The speaker, therefore, who wishes to use suggestion 
with his audience will aim to touch their feelings, use emotional 
appeal. 

We shall see in Chapter XIV, “The Impressive Speech,” 
that the only way to stir the emotions is through the concrete — 
through examples and illustrations, or images. The emotions 
are stirred by presenting, through the imagination, images to 
the senses. Imagery, therefore, as exemplified in figures of 
speech and other forms of illustration, is one of the principal 
devices for getting results through suggestion in speaking. 

Stereotypes. Walter Lippmann has given a new meaning to 
this word, which denotes a more or less vague thought pattern 
usually highly colored with emotion. A stereotype is a sort of 
label that we can conveniently attach to persons or ideas on 
very flimsy pretexts of identification. To a conservative, for 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


157 

example, a person addressing a group on a street corner, and 
criticizing some public policy, is a Bolshevist with all the bale¬ 
ful implications of that term. To a group of laborers, a captain 
of industry is a pot-bellied individual with a rhinocerous hide, 
whose great aim in life is to squeeze as much out of a day’s 
labor as possible and pay as little for it as he can. 

Assimilating people and ideas to stereotypes of this sort is 
really a process of calling names, of finding sanctions in shib¬ 
boleths. It is a convenient substitute for critical thinking and 
getting at the facts, for it is much easier to label a man or call 
him a name than to meet him in argument. This process is 
one of suggestion. 

Here, as in direct want appeal, a speaker may abuse his 
power and lead people astray by false comparisons and sug¬ 
gestions, by using words or phrases weighted with emotion, 
such as patriotism, liberty, the stars and stripes, equality, brother¬ 
hood of man, national honor, bolshevism, communism, capitalism, 
un-American. Words like these are surcharged with feeling, 
and serve to mould the mob spirit. To bring persons, beliefs, 
and acts within these categories or stereotypes when they do 
not belong there is the work of the charlatan. One may cheat 
an audience with an epithet or a suggestion; but one may also 
cheat them with a logical argument, and make the worse appear 
the better reason. 

The best way to be proof against sophistry of any kind is to 
understand clearly the character of the persuasive processes 
used, whether logical argument, direct want appeal, or sugges¬ 
tion. All three may be used in the same paragraph or in the 
same advertisement. In the ordinary persuasive speech, they 
mix and mingle so that it is not always easy to tell them apart. 
Logical argument and want appeal almost invariably go to¬ 
gether in practical speaking. The amount of suggestion used 
depends on the speaker, and it is a safe statement that the 
more successful the speaker, the more suggestion he will use; 
or perhaps more accurately, the more he uses suggestion, espe- 


158 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

dally with mixed audiences, the more successful he will be. 
All have their place, and the greatest art is to give each its 
appropriate place. 

D. The Speaker as a Source of Suggestibility. There are 
certain other conditions that tend to make an audience sug¬ 
gestible. The most important of these is the relation of the 
speaker to his audience. If an audience is to accept more or 
less uncritically what a speaker says, its members must have 
confidence in him. They must feel that he is sincere and 
honest, and not motivated by ulterior purposes. One of the 
first things that a successful speaker tries to do is to get into 
the good graces of his audience; to win their good will and 
favorable attention. He does this usually by getting on com¬ 
mon ground of pleasurable feeling, through a bit of humor, or 
perhaps judicious bestowal of praise where praise is due, and in 
general by those qualities of modesty, fairness, sincerity, which 
all people like to see in a speaker, and which naturally inspire 
confidence. Good speeches furnish an abundance of examples 
of how this is done. A somewhat unusual one is Lincoln’s in¬ 
troduction to his “Columbus Speech,” delivered in October, 1859, 
after his fame had spread somewhat as a result of the Lincoln- 
Douglas debates the previous fall. 

Fellow-citizens of the State of Ohio: I cannot fail to remember 
that I appear for the first time before an audience in this now great 
State — an audience that is accustomed to hear such speakers as 
Corwin, and Chase, and Wade, and many other renowned men; and 
remembering this, I feel that it will be well for you, as for me, that 
you should not raise your expectations to that standard to which 
you would have been justified in raising them had one of these dis¬ 
tinguished men appeared before you. You would perhaps be only 
preparing a disappointment for yourselves, and, as a consequence of 
your disappointment, mortification to me. I hope, therefore, that 
you will commence with very moderate expectations; and perhaps, 
if you will give me your attention, I shall be able to interest you to 
a moderate degree. 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


I 59 

An introduction like this disarms suspicion. Only modest 
and sincere men speak like this. If a speaker can go a step 
farther and can make his hearers feel that he speaks out of an 
abundance of knowledge on the subject, and as an authority, 
he will gain prestige and tend to have his statements accepted 
as valid. In the New Testament we are told that Jesus of 
Nazareth spoke “as one having authority,” and the people 
heard him gladly and believed. Elsewhere we have quoted 
Emerson to the effect that in any knot of men, the one who 
has the facts — that is, real knowledge of his subject — will 
have the ears of his hearers, and confidence as well. During 
several political campaigns the utterances of William Jennings 
Bryan were gospel to millions of voters, who accepted his 
statements uncritically at their face value. 

Confidence, authority, and prestige in a speaker greatly en¬ 
hance the suggestibility of the audience and so create a condition 
favorable for the uncritical acceptance of his utterances. 

In Conclusion. Suggestion, as applied to persuasive speak¬ 
ing, is in fact an old process to which modern psychology has 
given a new name. It is the process of influencing behavior by 
presenting an idea in such a way as to win acceptance for it 
without critical deliberation. In its most important form it 
consists essentially in comparing an idea or belief which func¬ 
tions inadequately or not at all in behavior with an idea or 
belief which does function adequately, or at least more fully, 
in the minds of the listeners, with an accompanying transfer 
of feeling or emotion from one thought pattern to the other. 
The all-important thing is to select the right thought pattern 
for comparison, one that carries with it a belief which is familiar 
to the audience and accepted by them without question. This 
is on the theory that man is a suggestible rather than a reason¬ 
ing being. Most of our beliefs and acts are the results of social 
contact with our fellows, rather than of any reasoning processes. 
Suggestibility varies with different persons, but all of us are 
more or less suggestible — principally more. The speaker uses 


160 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

largely illustrations and examples to get results through sug¬ 
gestion. It is largely the pictorial element in speaking that 
produces suggestion. A study of our great speeches, especially 
those addressed to popular audiences, will reveal how extensively 
this process is used. It is a plain statement of fact to say that, 
for ordinary speaking, suggestion is far more serviceable and 
effective than logical argument. Logical argument and want 
appeal have, their places — very important ones; but whoever 
would excel in presenting ideas — truth as he sees it — to 
popular audiences should cultivate the use of suggestion in 
speaking. 


EXERCISES 

1. Study critically one of the speeches assigned for the use of sugges¬ 
tion. Bring to class at least three good examples of suggestion 
from the speech you read. Explain effects in terms of attitude, 
belief, or action. Observe the connection between the pictorial 
element and suggestion. 

2. Prepare to deliver a short speech in class, using suggestion as much 
as possible. Do not overlook the value of illustrations here. 

3. Give orally a criticism of a speech you have lately heard which 
emphasized suggestion rather than logical argument and want 
appeal. Was the speech effective? What was the nature of audi¬ 
ence? Was the element of suggestion overdone? 


READINGS 

Speeches 

“Which Knew Not Joseph,” by Bruce Barton ( Lindgren ). 

“The Reign of the Common People,” by Henry Ward Beecher (Vol. 
XIII). 

“The Scholar in a Republic,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. 
II). 

“Social Responsibilities,” by John B. Gough (Vol. XIII). 

“The Choice of Books,” by Frederic Harrison (Vol. VII). 

“The Battle of Life,” by Mary Livermore {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 


MOTIVATION: SUGGESTION 


161 


References 

Walter Dill Scott: Psychology of Public Speaking (1926). 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), Chap. XIX, § 8. 

Harry Allen Overstreet: Influencing Human Behavior (1925), Chaps. 

III-IV. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. VIII. 

Boris Sidis: Psychology of Suggestion (1898). 

Hugo Miinsterberg: Psychotherapy (1909). 

Maurice Walter Keatinge: Suggestion in Education (Second Edition, 
1907). 


CHAPTER XI 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 

It is proof of high culture, to say the greatest matter in the simplest 
way. — Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Herbert Spencer in his essay, “The Philosophy of Style,” 
deduces a general principle from which are derived many of 
the rules of rhetoric ordinarily given for effective expression. 
The principle applies even more emphatically to speaking than 
to writing. Spencer thus states the principle: 

On seeking for some clue to the law underlying these current 
maxims, we may see implied in many of them, the importance of 
economizing the reader’s or hearer’s attention. To so present ideas 
that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort, 
is the desideratum towards which most of the rules above quoted 
point. When we condemn writing that is wordy, or confused, or 
intricate — when we praise this style as easy, and blame that as 
fatiguing, we consciously or unconsciously assume this desideratum as 
our standard of judgment. Regarding language as an apparatus of 
symbols for conveying thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical 
apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the 
greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is 
absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or 
listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power 
available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, 
requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images sug¬ 
gested by them requires a further part; and only that part which 
remains can be used for framing the thought expressed. Hence, the 
more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each 
sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained 
idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived. 

162 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


163 

It is of first importance that those who aspire to attain skill 
in speaking should become thoroughly familiar with the style 
and method of those who are acknowledged masters in that 
art and observe how they exemplify this fundamental principle 
of effective expression. You will find that simplicity is the 
keynote to their style; simplicity of diction, simplicity of sen¬ 
tence structure, and simplicity in the general manner of pre¬ 
senting things. You will do well to become thoroughly saturated 
with the best models that the literature of public address 
affords. This will require much reading, but time so spent will 
be well repaid. The literature of public address contains many 
of the most brilliant gems in our language, which should prove 
a source of inspiration in the pursuit of your work in speech 
training. 

Style in Its Broad Sense. The word “style” as ordinarily 
used has a broad signification. It is plain that when we are 
considering specific speech materials, such as the concrete ex¬ 
ample, figures of speech, anecdotes, we are dealing in some 
measure with the elements of style. By style we mean not only 
the impress of a personality on the stuff that speeches are made 
of, but also the character of the materials out of which a speech 
is made. We speak of a simple style, an involved style, a dig¬ 
nified style, a picturesque style, a concrete style, an abstract 
style, an informal style, and so on. We use these adjectives 
to describe the dominant aspects of style. A style may be at 
once simple, informal, concrete, picturesque, vivid. Good dic¬ 
tion, figures of speech, originality, more than most other ele¬ 
ments, tend to give distinction to style. We have already 
considered figures of speech and other concrete materials that 
go to make up a speech. We shall here consider diction and 
some of the other more important elements of the speaking 
style. 

Diction. Instant understanding is the first law of the speak¬ 
ing style. This is obvious enough when you consider that a 
speaker must be understood when he utters his words, or not 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


164 

at all. When we read an essay or a poem, and come across 
something that is not plain, we can stop and read it again, and 
if necessary reflect upon it. We can even go to the dictionary 
and look up a word. Not so in listening to a speech. We 
cannot stop to ponder and inquire about the meaning. We 
must get it the moment the words fall from the speaker’s lips. 
Good speakers understand this. They know the limitation of 
the human mind in following a speech, and that limitation is 
very marked. This is strikingly true with popular audiences, 
and is true in greater or less degree of all audiences. Hear 
what an experienced lecturer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, has to 
say on this subject: 

The average intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, 
is not very high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it 
is not very rapid or profound. A lecture ought to be something 
which all can understand. A thoroughly popular lecture ought to 
have nothing in it which five hundred people cannot all take in at a 
flash just as it is uttered. 

A study of successful speakers reveals a wonderful simplicity 
in style. Especially is this true of the orators of the last fifty 
or seventy-five years, the period in which popular oratory 
spread through the lyceum and the Chautauqua as it has 
never spread before. There is a charm of simplicity in the 
addresses of such men as Beecher, Ingersoll, Lincoln, Grady, 
Talmage, Wendell Phillips, John B. Gough, Russell H. Conwell, 
and William Jennings Bryan. Their sentences are short and 
crisp and simple in structure, while by actual count, one may 
discover that for everyone hundred words they use,about ninety 
to ninety-five are words of one and two syllables. Not the 
least element of attractiveness and popularity in Mr. Bryan’s 
speaking was the simplicity of form and outline into which he 
threw all his speeches. These men understood their audiences 
and their genius impelled them to present truth in such simple 
form that the humblest of their hearers could grasp it. They 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


165 

did this, not with a contemptuous air of condescension, but with 
a spirit of fine appreciation of the demands of their art. The 
ancients emphasized this aspect of the speaking style. Cicero 
impressed it on his readers in the following language: 

While in other things that is most excellent which is most remote 
from the knowledge and understanding of the illiterate, it is in speak¬ 
ing even the greatest of faults to vary from the ordinary kind of 
language and the practice sanctioned by universal reason. 

The diction of American orators, in point of simplicity, is 
indicated by the following table. The percentages have been 
found by counting one hundred words in twenty-five different 
places for each speaker. That may not give an absolutely 
accurate index, but it is close enough for our purpose. 


Table Showing Diction of American Orators 



Words of One 

Words of More 


and Two 

than Two 


Syllables 

Syllables 

Russell H. Conwell 1 . 

. 94 - 5 % 

5 - 5 % 

Robert Ingersoll. 

. 92.44 

7-56 

Wendell Phillips. 

. 9 I -96 

8.04 

Henry Ward Beecher. 


9-52 

John B. Gough. 

. 90.3 

9-7 

Henry W. Grady. 

. 90.3 

9-7 

Abraham Lincoln. 

. 89.97 

10.03 

William Jennings Bryan. 

. 89. 

11. 


The Advantages of Simple Words. A word is not necessarily 
a good word because it contains only one or two syllables, nor 
is it necessarily a bad word because it contains more than two. 
Caoutchouc , guano , legumes , are words of two syllables, and 
still no speaker would get very far foisting such words upon 
a mixed audience unless he explained what they mean. The 
real test, of course, is that the word shall be easily understood, 
1 “Acres of Diamonds” only lecture considered. 










i66 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


and that it shall carry the richest and most vivid meaning 
possible for the accomplishment of the speaker’s aim. 

This much may be said : that a short word has at least two 
distinct advantages over a long one. For one thing, it is easier 
to understand. Its meaning can usually be grasped in a moment. 
The language of ordinary conversation is made up largely of 
words of one and two syllables. Such words carry definite and 
immediate meanings, and with the least expenditure of effort. 
There is some mental energy required to recognize the sounds 
of any word, and especially of a long one. This effort soon 
becomes fatiguing if words are spoken indistinctly and the 
voice is low and hard to hear. Whatever mental energy is 
expended in understanding the symbols is lost in getting and 
appreciating the full meaning. Other things equal, short words 
are, therefore, more easily grasped and more forceful than long 
ones. 

Again, short words, as a rule, have richer associations and 
are more meaningful than long ones. The words of childhood, 
of fireside, family and friends are largely Anglo-Saxon words 
of one and two syllables. These words are bound up with our 
earliest experiences and associations and are full of color and 
warmth. The classical element in our language, on the other 
hand — made up largely of polysyllabic words — is borrowed, 
adventitious, foreign. It is cold and colorless. The difference 
between the two is the difference between home and habitation , 
friend and associate , play and amusement. The short Anglo- 
Saxon words, wrapped up as they are with our youthful experi¬ 
ences and memories, touch off thought and emotional patterns 
much more easily than the others. They are therefore more 
suggestive and forceful. 

Hear what Henry Ward Beecher has to say about this in his 
lectures to Yale divinity students . 1 

I have known a great many most admirable preachers who lost 
almost all real sympathetic hold upon their congregations because 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. Pilgrim Press: First Series, p. 131. 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


167 

they were too literary, too periphrastic, and too scholastic in their 
diction. They always preferred to use large language, rather than 
good Saxon English. But let me tell you, there is a subtle charm 
in the use of plain language that pleases people, they scarcely know 
why. It gives bell-notes which ring out suggestions to the popular 
heart. There are words that men have heard when boys at home, 
around the hearth and the table, words that are full of father and of 
mother, and full of common and domestic life. Those are the words 
that afterward, when brought into your discourse, will produce a 
strong influence on your auditors, giving an element of success; words 
which will have an effect that your hearers themselves cannot under¬ 
stand. For, after all, simple language is loaded down and stained 
through with the best testimonies and memories of life. 

It is worth noting that in this passage of 167 words, 151 words 
are of one and two syllables. 

College students are frequently offenders through their use 
of involved, pedantic diction. They often sound as if they 
had swallowed the Standard Dictionary. They imagine that 
emitting big words and mouth-filling phrases is a sign of erudi¬ 
tion. This is of course pure pedantry, and very bad psychology 
in the bargain. They carry into their speaking a ponderous, 
dray horse style, which they have developed in writing themes. 
Such a style is not at all adapted to public address, whatever 
may be said for it for writing purposes. 

It is said that when John Heyl Vincent, the father of Chau¬ 
tauqua, once asked Dr. Hall, pastor of the Fifth Avenue Pres¬ 
byterian Church, what his methods were in dealing with young 
and immature minds, the latter deliberately replied: 

“Ah, in the effort to establish relations of sympathetic recep¬ 
tivity in relatively crude and immature minds, I try to employ 
language that is essentially simple, and to rely upon concrete 
illustrations and imagery which may establish some connection 
with the apperceptive capacities of those whom I am address¬ 
ing.” 

Dr. Vincent then turned to Sam Jones, the Southern Evan¬ 
gelist, and asked, “Mr. Jones, what are your methods?” 


i68 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Abruptly and sarcastically he replied, “Oh, I put the fodder 
on the ground where anything from a jackass to a giraffe can 
get at it.” 

This may be a homely way to put it, but it is sound 
advice. 

It is a great mental strain to listen to a speech for an hour or 
more, and unless the effort to hear and understand is made as 
easy as possible, the speaker is likely, before he gets through, 
to be addressing deaf ears. So let us repeat that a speaker 
should not be merely understood; he should be easily under¬ 
stood. He must so speak that he not only can be understood, 
but that he cannot help being understood. 

Picture Words. Still another aspect of words worth noting 
for speech-making purposes is their sensuous quality. Words 
that embody imagery are to be preferred to those that do not, 
especially visual imagery. Almost all persons are visual- 
minded and take in more experiences through the eye than in 
any other way. To say that a certain man is a live wire or a 
human dynamo is more forceful than to say that he is active 
or alert. To say that Anglo-Saxon words are “full of father 
and of mother” is much more vivid than to say they have 
emotional association. 

Most good picture words are figurative. The following ex¬ 
cerpt from Beecher’s “Eulogy on Wendell Phillips” is an 
example of a simple speaking style with picture words prominent. 

The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest and 
all the seductions of ambition was singularly his. To choose the lowly 
for their sake; to abandon all favour, all power, all comfort, all ambi¬ 
tion, all greatness — that was his genius and glory. He confronted 
the spirit of the Nation and of the age. I had almost said, he set 
himself against nature, as if he had been a decree of God overriding 
all these other insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. 
Phillips was not called to be a universal orator any more than he 
was a universal thinker. In literature and in history he was widely 
read; in person most elegant; in manners most accomplished; gentle 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


169 

as a babe; sweet as a new-blown rose; in voice, clear and silvery. 
He was not a man of tempests; he was not an orchestra of a hundred 
instruments; he was not an organ, mighty and complex. The Nation 
slept, and God wanted a trumpet, sharp, far-sounding, narrow and 
intense; and that was Mr. Phillips. The long roll is not particularly 
agreeable in music or in times of peace, but it is better than flutes or 
harps when men are in a great battle, or are on the point of it. His 
eloquence was penetrating and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty 
Gulf Stream; he did not dash upon the continent as the ocean does; 
he was not a mighty rushing river. His eloquence was a flight of 
arrows; sentence after sentence, polished, and most of them burning. 
He shot them one after the other, and where they struck they slew; 
always elegant, always awful. 1 

There is magic in words. 

Seeking to be rich in speech, you will find that in the broad ocean 
of our English literature there are pearls of great price, our potent 
English words — words that are wizards more mighty than the old 
Scotch magician; words that are pictures bright and moving with all 
the coloring and circumstance of life; words that go down the century 
like battle-cries; words that sob like litanies, sing like larks, sigh like 
zephyrs, shout like seas. Seek amid our exhaustless stores, and you 
will find words that flash like the stars of the frosty sky, or are 
melting and tender like Love’s tear-filled eyes; words that are fresh 
and crisp like the mountain-breeze in autumn, or are mellow and rich 
as an old painting; words that are sharp, unbending, and precise like 
Alpine needle-points, or are heavy and rugged like great nuggets of 
gold; words that are glittering and gay like imperial gems, or are 
chaste and refined like the face of a Muse. Search, and ye shall find 
words that crush like the battle-axe of Richard or cut like the scimitar 
of Solyman; words that sting like a serpent’s fang or soothe like a 
mother’s kiss; words that can unveil the nether depths of hell or point 
out the heavenly heights of purity and peace; words that can recall a 
Judas, words that reveal the Christ. 2 

Sentence Structure. Just as simple and easily understood 
words with a large picture element are the best in speaking, so 

1 Lectures and Orations (1913), p. 220. 

2 Beecher, et al.: Oratory (1897), p. 67. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


170 

short and simply constructed sentences are to be favored. We 
do not like long, involved sentences because of the mental 
effort necessary to carry the meaning. Robert Ingersoll, per¬ 
haps the most popular of all popular speakers, furnishes excel¬ 
lent models for study in the use of short and simple sentences. 
Here are examples from his eulogy of Lincoln. 

Lincoln was by nature a diplomat. He knew the art of sailing 
against the wind. He had as much shrewdness as is consistent with 
honesty. He understood, not only the rights of individuals, but of 
nations. In all his correspondence with other governments he neither 
wrote nor sanctioned a line which afterward was used to tie his hands. 
In the use of perfect English he easily rose above all his advisers and 
all his fellows. 

Lincoln always tried to do things in the easiest way. He did not 
waste his strength. He was not particular about moving along 
straight lines. He did not tunnel the mountains. He was willing to 
go around, and reach the end desired as a river reaches the sea. 

Short sentences predominate in the following paragraph from 
the speech of Owen D. Young at Harvard, June 4, 1927. 

Here in America, we have raised the standard of political equality. 
Shall we be able to add to that, full equality in economic opportunity? 
No man is wholly free until he is both politically and economically 
free. No man with an uneconomic and failing business is free. He is 
unable to meet his obligations to his family, to society, and to himself. 
No man with an inadequate wage is free. He is unable to meet his 
obligations to his family, to society, and to himself. No man is free 
who can provide only for physical needs. He must also be in a posi¬ 
tion to take advantage of cultural opportunities. Business, as the 
process of coordinating men’s capital and effort in all fields of activity, 
will not have accomplished its full service until it shall have provided 
the opportunity for all men to be economically free. I have referred 
elsewhere to the cultural wage. I repeat it here as an appropriate 
term with which to measure the right earnings of every member of a 
sound society competent and willing to work. 1 

1 O’Neill and Riley: Contemporary Speeches (1930), p. 87. 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


171 

Contrast. The principle of contrast runs through all art and 
all life. The effect is primarily to produce vividness. Just as 
certain colors in juxtaposition set each other off, so opposite 
ideas set against each other become more vivid. The words on 
this page are printed black on white to produce the clearest 
and most vivid images. Success is never so thrilling as when 
it follows close upon the heels of failure. The golden glow of 
sunset is never so bright as when it falls at the end of a cloudy 
day. “A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier 
things,” sang Tennyson. 

In persuasive speaking, when we aim to rouse an audience 
to more or less definite action, it is imperative to present ideas 
as vividly and forcefully as possible. The principle of contrast, 
therefore, becomes an exceedingly useful device for the public 
speaker. 

Wendell Phillips in his lecture, “The Scholar in a Republic,” 
seeks to make accomplishments of popular government stand 
out by contrasting civilization under democratic Athens with 
that under king-ridden and priest-ridden Egypt. Observe the 
effect he gets with an anecdote as well as the forcefulness of 
the contrast drawn. 

Anacharsis went into the Archon’s court at Athens, heard a case 
argued by the great men of that city, and saw the vote by five 
hundred men. Walking in the streets, some one asked him, “What 
do you think of Athenian liberty?” “I think,” said he, “wise men 
argue cases, and fools decide them.” Just what that timid scholar, 
two thousand years ago, said in the streets of Athens, that which calls 
itself scholarship here says today of popular agitation, — that it lets 
wise men argue questions and fools decide them. But that Athens 
where fools decided the gravest questions of policy and of right and 
wrong, where property you had gathered wearily today might be 
wrung from you by the caprice of the mob tomorrow, — that very 
Athens probably secured, for its era, the greatest amount of human 
happiness and nobleness, invented art, and sounded for us the depths 
of philosophy. God lent to it the largest intellects, and it flashes today 
the torch that gilds yet the mountain peaks of the Old World. While 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


172 

Egypt, the hunker conservative of antiquity, where nobody dared to 
differ from the priest or to be wiser than his grandfather; where men 
pretended to be alive, though swaddled in the grave-clothes of creed 
and custom as close as their mummies were in linen, — that Egypt is 
hid in the tomb it inhabited, and the intellect Athens has trained for 
us digs today those ashes to find out how buried and forgotten hunker- 
ism lived and acted. 

Claude Bowers in his keynote speech at the National Demo¬ 
cratic Convention, Houston, Texas, 1928, uses the principle of 
contrast to good purpose. 

Thus they (Republicans) frankly base their policies on the political 
principles of Hamilton, and we go forth to battle for the principles of 
Thomas Jefferson. The issues are as fundamental as they were when 
Jefferson and Hamilton crossed swords more than a century ago. 
To understand the conflicting views of these two men on the functions 
of government is to grasp the deep significance of this campaign. 

Now, Hamilton believed in the rule of an aristocracy of money, and 
Jefferson in a democracy of men. 

Hamilton believed that governments are created for the domination 
of the masses, and Jefferson that they are created for the service of the 
people. 

Hamilton wrote to Morris that governments are strong in propor¬ 
tion as they are made profitable to the powerful, and Jefferson knew 
that no government is fit to live that does not conserve the interest of 
the average man. 

Hamilton proposed a scheme for binding the wealthy to the 
government by making government a source of revenue to the 
wealthy; and Jefferson unfurled his banner of equal rights. 

Hamilton wanted to wipe out the boundary lines of States, and 
Jefferson was the champion of their sovereign powers. 

Hamilton would have concentrated authority remote from the 
people and Jefferson would have diffused it among them. 

Hamilton would have injected governmental activities into all the 
affairs of men; and Jefferson laid it down as an axiom of freedom that 
“that government is best which governs least.” 1 

1 O’Neill and Riley: Contemporary Speeches (1930), p. 507. 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


173 

Originality: Power of Statement. Emerson lists “power of 
statement” as one of the requisites of a great speaker. By 
that he means originality in the manner of saying things; the 
power to state an issue or an idea in such a way that it cannot 
be disregarded. When Lincoln, in his “Springfield Speech,” 
uttered the historic statement: “This country cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free,” he put the question in a 
new light. Few persons had thought of it in that way before. 
They had supposed that the country could endure half slave 
and half free. Lincoln went a long way in the ‘ Springfield 
Speech” to prove that the country was gradually being pre¬ 
pared for extending slavery and making it national. 

H. G. Wells has said, “Civilization is a race between educa¬ 
tion and catastrophe.” That is putting the value of education 
in a compelling way. When William Lloyd Garrison in 1831 
stated editorially in The Liberator , “I will be as harsh as truth, 
as uncompromising as justice: I am in earnest; I will not equivo¬ 
cate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I 
will be heard” people began to realize that a new force had to 
be reckoned with in American society. 

The following passage is original in both thought and form. 
Observe the simple diction and the effective use of the direct 
quotation — both treated in this chapter. 

At the threshold of our lives, society meets us and offers us the 
following agreement: I will feed you, nourish you, support you, you 
shall have clothing, warmth and shelter; your property shall be pro¬ 
tected; your life shall be secure; you shall enjoy certain privileges, 
and all I ask in return is that you shall surrender to me your brain, 
your thought, your soul. “Think my thoughts and you shall eat my 
bread,” is the silent compact to which society pledges every one of us. 
If nature is the mother of man, society is his step mother, and she has 
an elaborate system of education by which she seeks to reverse and 
neutralize that mother’s instruction. You are dull; dullness is danger¬ 
ous to society; therefore you shall be patched and mended, and shel¬ 
lacked and varnished, until you have reached the proper degree of 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


174 

mediocrity. You are a genius; genius is equally dangerous to society; 
therefore you shall be trimmed and pruned, and mutilated, and 
dwarfed until you, too, are properly mediocre. Hence it happens 
that the nineteenth century is fertile beyond all other ages in great 
nations, great institutions, great societies and barren beyond most 
other ages in great men, for the state of society which tends to produce 
greatness in states is directly opposed to that which tends to produce 
greatness in individuals. Society is therefore perfectly logical in her 
conduct; she realizes that it is by stunting the individuals that the 
state can perfectly develop, by mutilating the separate twigs that the 
whole tree can be made symmetrical; she understands that as a great 
man is the highest of all blessings to a nation in adversity, so he is the 
greatest of all dangers to a nation in prosperity; and she guides her 
conduct by this principle. 1 

The best way to appreciate what a force in effective speaking 
may be this power of statement is to observe how great speakers 
exemplify it. Many of them have had that universal quality 
of mind which formulates maxims, strikes off epigrams, and 
condenses large quantities of thought into an aphorism. Lincoln 
had it. Wendell Phillips had it. Ingersoll had it. Emerson had 
it beyond all other American lecturers and writers. Webster 
did not possess it in any marked degree. One finds very few 
quotable statements in Webster; that is, of the epigrammatic 
kind. This may seem strange considering the sweep of intellect 
ordinarily ascribed to that distinguished orator and statesman. 
Webster was a good logician, a good constitutional lawyer, and 
a powerful parliamentary orator. But he was not a popular 
speaker. His intellect was cast in a large mould, and he needed 
large issues to enlist his powers. On minor occasions he had 
difficulty in finding anything to say. Webster had little of the 
art of popular address that characterizes our great popular 
orators. 

Lincoln had a singular felicity in getting to the heart of great 
issues and stating them so simply that all could understand, 

1 See page 422 of this book. 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


175 

stripping them of all verbiage and presenting them in their 
naked strength. Douglas’ doctrine of “popular sovereignty” 
he characterized as “the right of a people to exclude a thing 
from where it has a legal right to be.” In the final debate at 
Alton he characterized it as “ the most monstrous doctrine that 
ever emanated from the mouth of any respectable man on 
earth.” In the “First Inaugural,” he put the issue of secession 
up to the Southern people in the question, “Can enemies make 
treaties easier than friends can make laws?” “Let us have faith 
that right makes might, and in that faith let us in the end dare 
to do our duty as we understand it” was his simple peroration 
to the “Cooper Union Speech.” Of the twenty-six words used 
in this sentence twenty-four are words of one syllable! 

In power of statement, Wendell Phillips is probably without 
a peer among American orators. Many of his utterances are 
weighted with thought, are in fact condensed social philosophy. 
His speeches abound in epigrams and aphorisms. Here are a 
few. 

The cause of truth is advanced in the long run by allowing all to 
air their prejudices and advocate all their errors. 

Power is ever stealing from the many to the few. 

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated. 

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victory. 
(Inscribed on Phillips’ monument, Boston Common). 

Most men prudently lie down into nameless graves, while now and 
then one forgets himself into immortality. 

A community that will not protect its humblest citizen in the free 
utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a 
gang of slaves. 

Invective , by which we understand a somewhat violent de¬ 
nunciation of other people’s conduct, depends for its effective¬ 
ness largely on power of statement. Only occasions of great 
provocation justify invective. The following from Wendell 
Phillips is about as devastating as any we have on record. 
A group of men had broken up a meeting of abolitionists. 


176 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Who were they? [asks Phillips.] Weak sons of moderate fathers, 
dandled into effeminacy, of course wholly unfit for business. But 
overflowing trade sometimes laps up such, as it does all obtainable 
instruments. Instead of fire-engines, we take pails and dippers, in 
times of sore need. But such the first frost nips into idleness. Narrow 
men, ambitious of office, fancying that the inheritance of a million 
entitles them to political advancement. Bloated distillers, some rich, 
some without wit enough to keep the money they stole. Old families 
run to seed in respectable dulness, —fruges consumere nati, — born 
only to eat. Trading families, in the third generation, playing at stock- 
jobbing to lose in State Street what their fathers made by smuggling 
in India. Sweep in a hundred young rogues, the grief of mothers and 
the disgrace of their names, good as naughts to fill up a place in what is 
called “society,” and entitled as such to shrink from notice, — but 
the motes we do not usually see get looked at when they trouble our 
eyes. Snobbish sons of fathers lately rich, anxious to show themselves 
rotten before they are ripe. (Hitherto there had been no demonstra¬ 
tions from the hearers, except occasional suppressed laughter at the 
speaker’s sarcasms. The laughter here was received with hisses by a 
portion of the audience.) These, taking courage from the presence of 
bolder rogues, some from jail and others whom technical skill saved 
therefrom, — the whole led by a third-rate lawyer broken down to a 
cotton-clerk (hisses), borrowing consequence from married wealth, — 
not one who ever added a dollar, much less an idea, to the wealth of 
the city, not one able to give a reason or an excuse for the prejudice 
that is in him, — these are the men, this is the house of nobles, whose 
leave we are to ask before we speak and hold meetings. These are the 
men who tell us, the children of the Pilgrims, the representatives of 
Endicott and Winthrop, of Sewall and Quincy, of Hancock and Adams 
and Otis, what opinions we shall express, and what meetings we shall 
hold! 1 

Rhythm, Alliteration. It is not to our purpose to consider 
minutely all those elements of oratorical composition which 
give distinction to style. Some of them are very subtle, much 
harder to describe than to feel. The styles of such men as 
Beecher and Ingersoll have much in common; they are also 
1 “Mobs and Education,” in Speeches, First Series, p. 215. 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


177 

very different. The styles of Phillips and Starr King have 
many elements of likeness, and still they are different. Only 
a thorough study of all of them will impress on you the dis¬ 
tinctive charm and merits of the style of each of these enchant¬ 
ing masters of speech. 

H. A. Overstreet, in his Influencing Human Behavior , has 
done well to call attention to the very significant role which 
rhythm plays in writing. It is probably more important still 
in speaking, for voice cadences lend their effects to the rhythmic 
movement of the words. One may imagine the almost hyp¬ 
notic effect of some passages in Ingersoll’s lectures where the 
magic of monosyllabic words combines with rhythm to charm 
the ear and mind. An easy, flowing rhythm economizes mental 
effort and leaves the maximum of attention for appreciating 
thought and feeling; while an uncertain, jerky, hesitating, 
involved rhythm has the opposite effect. 

The following from Sheil seems to me to present a jerky and 
involved rhythm, which not only makes the passage difficult of 
rendering, but hard to follow and understand as well. Espe¬ 
cially is that true of the latter part. 

Aliens! Good God! Was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the 
House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, “ Hold! I have 
seen the aliens do their duty? ” He ought to have remembered that, 
from the earliest achievement, in which he displayed that military 
genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of warfare, down 
to the last and surpassing combat, which has made his name im¬ 
perishable — from Assaye to Waterloo — the Irish soldiers, with 
whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the 
glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. 
Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera, Badajos, 
Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest — tell me, 
for you were there (I appeal to the gallant soldier before me), tell me, 
if on that day, when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the 
balance, while death fell in showers, when the artillery of France 
was leveled with the precision of the most deadly science, when her 
legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their 


178 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset — tell me if for 
an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 
“aliens” blanched? 

Rhythm is a law of life, and figures in all great art. Much 
of the pleasure we derive from poetry we owe to its rhythm. 
It is probable that rhythm plays a larger part in poetry and 
oratory than in any other of the arts. 

Take the following from Ingersoll, much quoted and de¬ 
claimed. It possesses rhythm, alliteration, beauty, which cer¬ 
tainly make a large contribution to the eloquence of the passage. 

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon — a 
magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead — and 
gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at 
last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and 
thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. 

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating 
suicide. I saw him at Toulon — I saw him putting down the mob in 
the streets of Paris — I saw him at the head of the army of Italy — I 
saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand 
— I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids — I saw him 
conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of 
the crags. I saw him at Marengo — at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him 
in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild 
blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered leaves. I saw him at 
Leipsic in defeat and disaster — driven by a million bayonets back 
upon Paris — clutched like a wild beast — banished to Elba. I saw 
him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him 
upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined 
to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. 
Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad 
and solemn sea. 

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made — of the tears 
that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever 
loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And 
I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden 
shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


I 79 

door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the Au¬ 
tumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my 
loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky — with 
my children upon my knees and their arms about me — I would rather 
have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the 
dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of 
force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great. 1 

Alliteration is essentially an emotional quality of style, and 
greatly adds to the impressiveness of language. It is a part of 
the poetry of eloquence. No one who has an ear attuned to 
pleasing combinations of articulate sounds can be deaf to its 
forcefulness, charm, and beauty. 

Ingersoll exemplifies this quality of style more extensively than 
any orator of whom we have record. His lectures are prose 
poetry, or poetic prose. He is easily our greatest word painter. 
The criticism is sometimes made that he carries his art to the 
point of artificiality; as in his address at his brother’s grave. 
This is probably true, but when allowance is made for that, In- 
gersoll’s style still remains one of the most distinctive of all time. 

Next to Ingersoll, in the use of alliteration as a quality of 
style, is Wendell Phillips. There is much alliteration, as well 
as pleasing rhythm and beauty, in all his speeches. The follow¬ 
ing may be regarded as a fair example. 

Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation, scath¬ 
ing sarcasm, and pitiless ridicule are wholly and always unjustifiable; 
else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any weapon which 
ever broke up the crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a slumbering 
conscience, shamed a proud sinner, or changed, in any way, the con¬ 
duct of a human being. Our aim is to alter public opinion. Did we 
live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and cents, and we 
would seek to prove only that slavery was an unprofitable investment. 
Were the nation one great, pure church, we would sit down and reason 
of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Had slavery 
fortified itself in a college, we would load our cannon with cold facts, 

1 Robert G. Ingersoll: Complete Works (Dresden Edition), vol. I, p. 369. 


i8o 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


and wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the 
world, — the world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit 
and self-interest, of weak men and wicked. 1 

As no house can be regarded of a high order that does not 
appeal to our sense of the beautiful, so no speech can be called 
a truly great speech that does not in some measure possess the 
element of beauty. We may imagine a house with its frame 
completed. The walls are up, the roof is on, the shingles are 
in place, the partitions are erected, the floor is laid, the plaster 
is on the walls. But the house is still far from finished. If it 
is going to be a really beautiful home, it is probably not half 
finished. It is much the same with a speech. When you have 
so far constructed it as to know what your purpose is going to 
be, what ideas you are going to present to attain your purpose, 
what the order of these ideas is going to be, how you are going 
to introduce your subject to your audience, and in a general 
way how you are going to conclude it, the speech is yet far 
from completed. If we may continue the analogy, the house 
has yet to be painted, the windows have to be put in, the 
woodwork must be finished, the walls decorated, and the floors 
polished, the doors leading from one room to another carefully 
put in place. So in a speech, the transitions from one main 
division to another, and from each subdivision to another must 
be carefully worked out; the doors must not creak on their 
hinges. We must seek acceptable words. The sentences must 
be pleasing to the ear, and easily understood. The illustrations 
have to be put in — windows to let in the light. Some atten¬ 
tion must be given to those elements that make for distinc¬ 
tion of style. And all — materials and manner of presentation 
— must be adapted to the intelligence, taste, and culture of 
the audience to be addressed. 

Importance of a Direct, Personal, Informal Style. The style 
of public address is strongly moulded by the fact that the 

1 Speeches: First Series, p. 109. 



THE SPEAKING STYLE 


181 


speaker stands face to face with a living, throbbing, pulsating 
entity — the audience — eager to understand all the speaker 
utters and to follow him in all his moods. The speaker naturally 
desires to establish between himself and his hearers as close 
rapport as possible. To accomplish this he uses an informal, 
personal style of speaking. This involves a lavish use of the 
personal pronouns in the first and second persons. The aim is 
to identify the interests of the speaker with those of his hearers, 
to establish the “you and I” relationship. The person who 
really succeeds in interesting an audience is likely to use these 
personal pronouns freely. Wendell Phillips, for instance, ex¬ 
hibits this informal, personal element in his style in a marked 
degree. One is almost amazed to find this most modest and 
self-effacing of men using the first personal pronoun more than 
a hundred times in some of his speeches, and the second personal 
pronoun perhaps half as often. No orator of whom we have 
any record had a closer personal contact with his audience than 
Phillips, nor has any shown greater mastery in holding the 
attention of his hearers. The testimony of those who had the 
privilege of hearing him was to the effect that an hour passed 
before anybody realized it. As one distinguished listener has 
put it, “ there was no sense that time had passed.” If you will 
examine his address to the Boston school children in 1865, you 
will observe how he constantly finds occasion to address them 
personally: “I can boast, boys and girls, more than you”; 
“Now, boys, the glory of a father”; “Young men and young 
women”; etc. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his “Hints on Speech 
Making” relates the following incident: 

The late Judge B. R. Curtis once lost a case in which John P. Hale 
of New Hampshire, a man not to be compared with him as a lawyer, 
was his successful antagonist. When asked the reason, he said, It 
was very curious. I had all the law and all the evidence, but that 
fellow Hale somehow got so intimate with the jury that he won the 


case. 


182 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


“I take my audience into my confidence much as I do a per¬ 
son,” said Booker T. Washington, the greatest of negro orators. 
Webster spoke to his juries as if he were one of them. His legal 
opponents referred to him as “the thirteenth jury man.” 

The Rhetorical Question. The rhetorical question is much 
used by speakers, and is one of the most valuable aids to clear¬ 
ness and vividness. It gives variety to style for one thing, and 
moreover presents ideas in such a way as to invite attention to 
them. It tends to put the audience in an attitude of mental 
alertness. When we tire of being told things in a dogmatic way, 
we may be willing to be asked questions about them. In fact 
we rather like it. Questions arouse mental curiosity and give 
us the satisfaction of answering them ourselves in our own way. 
For the rhetorical question, remember, is one that is to be 
answered by the hearers, not by the speaker. In his debates 
with Douglas, Lincoln uses the rhetorical question extensively. 
It is one of the outstanding elements of his style, and contributes 
greatly to the clear and convincing progress of his arguments. 

In the Charleston debate, Lincoln defended his statement, 
given in the “ Springfield Speech,” that this country cannot per¬ 
manently endure half slave and half free. Observe the use of 
the rhetorical question. 

I have said so, and I did not say it without what seemed to me to 
be good reasons. It perhaps would require more time than I have 
now to set forth these reasons in detail; but let me ask you a few 
questions. When are we to have peace upon it if it is kept in the posi¬ 
tion it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That 
is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop and allow 
Judge Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until 
they plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else 
our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace. But let 
me ask Judge Douglas how he is going to get the people to do that? 
They have been wrangling over this question for at least forty 
years. . . . When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the 
Nebraska bill in 1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. He 
promised that it would finish it all up immediately. . . . Now he 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


183 

tells us again that it is all over, and the people of Kansas have voted 
down the Lecompton constitution. How is it over? That was only- 
one of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agitation — one 
of these “final settlements.” Is Kansas in the Union? Has she 
formed a constitution that she is likely to come in under? Is not the 
slavery agitation still an open question in that Territory? Has the 
voting down of that constitution put an end to all the trouble? Is 
that more likely to settle it than every one of these previous attempts 
to settle the slavery agitation? Now, at this day in the history of the 
world we can no more foretell where the end of this slavery agitation 
will be than we can see the end of the world itself. 

The Direct Quotation. A most excellent speech device is 
the direct quotation. This does not mean exact quotations 
from literature and authorities. It means putting into direct 
discourse what would ordinarily be expressed in indirect dis¬ 
course. It means putting into the mouths of men, not the 
exact words which they have uttered, but words which in effect, 
and in the simplest possible language, express such views of 
theirs as the speaker wishes to bring before his hearers. Through 
this device, institutions, states, and societies are frequently 
personified and made to utter sentiments and views in a simple, 
direct way. Quotations of this kind are almost always short, 
seldom more than a sentence or two. 

While this rhetorical device is the essence of directness and 
simplicity, it does have its drawbacks. It does not have the 
accuracy of the exact or actual quotation. In condensing 
a person’s views on a great question into a simple sentence 
or two, it is not always easy to observe precision and ac¬ 
curacy. 

Almost all speakers use this device more or less, Wendell 
Phillips more than any other American orator. It is not un¬ 
common to find from fifteen to twenty-five instances of the 
direct discourse in a speech that occupied only a little over an 
hour in the delivery. The habit got him into trouble, at times, 
and even his friend, William Lloyd Garrison, found fault with 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


184 

him for putting into the mouths of men loose statements that 
gave more or less biased views of their position. 

The device, however, is well worth cultivating. Scrupulous 
care and fairness are needed to make it safe, but when rightly 
used, it is a matchless means for producing that instant under¬ 
standing so much needed — and so much neglected — in oral 
discourse. 

David Lloyd George, at a farewell dinner given in his honor 
in New York in 1923, used the direct quotation with excellent 
effect. 

What is the real problem in Europe today? I will tell you. In 
spite of the war, because Europe has been left so much to herself, she 
still believes in force. Why? 

France says: “Alsace-Lorraine was torn from our side fifty years 
ago. It was unjust; it was wrong; it was cruel; it was oppressive. 
Justice never gave it back to us. We had to lose 1,400,000 of our 
young men. You, in the British Empire, had to lose 900,000 of your 
young men. Force gave it back to us.” 

Poland! Poland says: “One hundred and fifty years ago our 
nationhood was destroyed. We were locked in the prison of great 
autocracies. We waited for justice. We thought we could hear 
possible footsteps, but they were simply the footsteps of our jailers 
outside. Force came at the end of 150 years and unlocked the door.” 

The Russian peasant says today: “ We never saw the light of liberty 
until the revolutionist came with his powder and blew our prison 
walls down.” 

What does Germany say? Germany says: “We trusted to justice. 
We trusted to a treaty. We are broken; we are shattered. Why? 
We are disarmed. We have no force.” That is why Europe believes 
in force. 1 

There are other elements of style in speaking that may be 
cultivated to advantage, but those named are the most impor¬ 
tant. If you will practice consistently the use of the devices 
suggested, you will at least be understood. There is a charm in 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), 
p. 340. 


THE SPfcAKING STYLE 185 

simplicity and easy understanding that holds true for speaking 
as for other arts. 

In Conclusion. If by some mental seismograph one could 
determine how much of a speech an audience really grasps, and 
how much of it is lost from lack of understanding or otherwise, 
we might have some startling revelations. The problem of 
communicating ideas by word of mouth is peculiar, in that 
understanding must be on the moment or not at all. The speaker 
therefore must use every possible device to make comprehension 
easy. He must use simple diction, or at least words easily 
understood by the audience. He must use sentences that are 
short and crisp and easy to grasp. His attitude toward his 
hearers will be personal, informal, direct. That is, he will 
address them much as he addresses a group of friends. He 
will not be afraid to use the personal pronouns freely, even 
those of the first person. He will use such devices as the rhe¬ 
torical question and the direct quotation. He will use concrete 
speech materials and illustrations freely. In his more finished 
efforts, he will have proper regard for such elements of style 
as give it distinction — alliteration, rhythm, beauty, elegance. 
A finished speech or lecture is a work of art. And lastly, let us 
remember with Beecher, “Simplicity of style both in language 
and manners is the shortest road to success.” 

EXERCISES 

1. Count 100 words in five different places in some selection from 
Henry Ward Beecher’s speeches. Set down the number having 
one and two syllables, and the number having more than two 
syllables. 

Do this for four other orators. You will find selections in the 
text. Ingersoll, Phillips, Thomas Starr King, and John B. Gough 
are suggested. Others will do. 

2. Read critically Phillips’ speech to Boston school children. Count 
the number of times he uses (i) the first personal pronoun; 
(2) the second personal pronoun; (3) the direct quotation; (4) the 


i86 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


rhetorical question. What forms of support do you find? What 
motives are appealed to? 

3. Bring to class specimens that exemplify the use of power of state¬ 
ment; also alliteration, rhythm, and beauty. 

4. Read one of the speeches listed in the readings for this chapter, 
and give a written or oral criticism of its style on the basis of 
criteria given in this chapter. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Aphorisms,” by John Morley {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 

“Abraham Lincoln,” by Robert Ingersoll {Ingersoll, Vol. III). 
“Address to the Boston School Children,” by Wendell Phillips. 
“Against Centralization,” by Henry W. Grady {Grady). 

“Big Blunders,” by T. DeWitt Talmage {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 
“The Prince of Peace,” by William Jennings Bryan (Vol. XIII). 
“The Grandeur of Nations,” by Charles Sumner {Sumner, Vol. I). 
“Cooper Union Speech,” by Abraham Lincoln (Vol. XI). 

“Eulogy on Lincoln,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: I). 
“Bunker Hill Oration,” by Daniel Webster (Vol. XI). 

“Abraham Lincoln,” by Stephen S. Wise {Lindgren). 

“Did Woodrow Wilson Fail?” by Charles Zeublin {Lindgren). 

References 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), Chap. XVI. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XV. 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chap. XXI. 

ADDRESS TO THE BOSTON SCHOOL CHILDREN 
By Wendell Phillips 

Fellow-Citizens: I was invited by the Mayor to address the 
scholars of the schools of Boston, but like my friend, Mr. Dana, who 
preceded me, I hardly know in what direction to look in the course of 
this address for the scholars. I can hardly turn my back on them, nor 
can I turn my back on you. I shall have to make a compromise, — 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


187 

that everlasting refuge of Americans. (Applause) I recollect, when I 
was in college, that when a classmate came upon the stage we could 
recognize in the audience where the family, the mother, or sister were, 
by noticing him when he made his first bow. He would look toward 
them, and they would invariably bow in return. By this inevitable 
sign, I have distinguished many a mother, sister, and father among the 
audience today. 

This is the first time for many years that I have participated in a 
school festival. I have received no invitation since 1824, when I was 
a little boy in a class in a Latin school, when we were turned out in a 
grand procession on yonder Common at nine o’clock in the morning. 
And for what? Not to hear eloquent music. No; but for the sight 
of something better than art of music, that thrilled more than elo¬ 
quence, a sight which should five in the memory forever, the best 
sight which Boston ever saw, — the welcome to Lafayette on his 
return to this country after an absence of a score of years. I can 
boast, boys and girls, more than you. I can boast that these eyes 
have beheld the hero of three revolutions; this hand has touched the 
right hand that held up Hancock and Washington. Not all this 
glorious celebration can equal that glad reception of the nation’s 
benefactor by all that Boston could offer him, — a sight of its children. 
It was a long procession, and, unlike other processions, we started 
punctually at the hour published. They would not let us wander 
about, and did not wish us to sit down. I there received my first 
lesson in hero-worship. I was so tired after four hours’ waiting I could 
scarcely stand. But when I saw him, — that glorious old Frenchman! 
— I could have stood until today. Well, now, boys, these were very 
small times compared with this. Our public examinations were held 
up in Boylston Hall. I do not believe we ever afforded banners; I 
know we never had any music. Now they take the classes out to walk 
on the Common at eleven o’clock. We were sent out into a small 
place eight feet by eleven, solid walls on one side and a paling on the 
other, which looked like a hencoop: there the public Latin scholars 
recreated themselves. They were very small times compared with 
these. 

As Mr. Dana referred to the facilities and opportunities that the 
Boston boys enjoy, I could not but think what it is that makes the 
efficient man. Not by floating with the current; you must swim 


i88 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


against it to develop strength and power. The danger is that a boy, 
with all these facilities, books, and libraries, may never make that 
sturdy scholar, that energetic man, we would wish him to become. 
When I look on such a scene as this, I go back to the precedent 
alluded to by you, sir, of him who travelled eighteen miles and 
worked all day to earn a book, and sat up all night to read it. By the 
side of me, in the same city of Boston, sat a boy in the Latin school, 
who bought his dictionary with money earned by picking chestnuts. 
Do you remember Cobbett, — and Frederick Douglas, whose eloquent 
notes still echo through the land, who learned to read from the posters 
on the highway; and Theodore Parker, who laid the foundation of his 
library with the book for which he spent three weeks in picking 
berries? 

Boys, you will not be moved to action by starvation and want. 
Where will you get the motive power? You will have the spur of 
ambition to be worthy of the fathers who have given you these op¬ 
portunities. Remember, boys, what fame it is that you bear up, — 
this old name of Boston! A certain well-known poet says it is the hub 
of the universe. Well, this is a gentle and generous satire. In Revolu¬ 
tionary days they talked of the Boston Revolution. When Samuel 
Johnson wrote his work against the American colonies, it was Boston 
he ridiculed. When the king could not sleep over night, he got up and 
muttered “Boston.” When the proclamation of pardon was issued, 
the only two excepted were the two Boston fanatics, — John Hancock 
and Sam Adams. (Applause.) But what did Boston do? They sent 
Hancock to Philadelphia to write his name on the Declaration of 
Independence in letters large enough, almost, for the king to read on 
the other side of the ocean. Boston then meant liberty. Come down 
to four or five years ago. What did Boston mean when the South went 
mad, and got up a new flag, and said they would put it in Boston on 
Faneuil Hall? It was Boston that meant liberty, as Boston had 
meant independence. And when our troops went out in the last war, 
what was it that gave them their superiority? It was the brains they 
carried from these schools. 

When General Butler was stopped near the Relay House with a 
broken locomotive, he turned to the Eighth Regiment, and asked if 
any of them could mend it. A private walked out of the ranks, and 
patted it on the back and said, “I ought to know it; I made it.” 


THE SPEAKING STYLE 


189 

When we went down to Charleston, and were kept seven miles off 
from the city, the Yankees sent down a New Hampshire Parrott that 
would send a two-hundred-pound shot into their midst. The great 
ability of New England has been proved. Now, boys, the glory of a 
father is his children. That father has done his work well who has 
left a child better than himself. The German prayer is, “Lord, grant 
I may be as well off tomorrow as yesterday!” No Yankee ever 
uttered that prayer. He always means that his son shall have a better 
starting-point in life than himself. The glory of a father is his children. 
Our fathers made themselves independent seventy or eighty years ago. 
It remains for us to devote ourselves to liberty and the welfare of 
others, with the generous willingness to do toward others as we 
would have others do to us. 

Now, boys, this is my lesson to you today. You cannot be as good 
as your fathers, unless you are better. You have your fathers’ ex¬ 
ample, — the opportunities and advantages they have accumulated, 
— and to be only as good is not enough. You must be better. You 
must copy only the spirit of your fathers, — and not their imperfec¬ 
tions. There was an old Boston merchant, years ago, who wanted a set 
of China made in Pekin. You know that Boston men sixty years ago 
looked at both sides of a cent before they spent it, and if they earned 
twelve cents, they would save eleven. He could not spare a whole 
plate, so he sent a cracked one, and when he received the set, there 
was a crack in every piece. The Chinese had imitated the pattern 
exactly. 

Now, boys, do not imitate us, or there will be a great many cracks. 
Be better than we. We have invented a telegraph, but what of that? 
I expect, if I live forty years, to see a telegraph that will send messages 
without wire, both ways at the same time. If you do not invent it, 
you are not so good as we are. You are bound to go ahead of us. 
The old London physician said the way to be well was to live on a 
sixpence, and earn it. That is education under the laws of necessity. 
We cannot give you that. Underneath you is the ever-watchful hand 
of city culture and wealth. All the motive we can give you is the 
name you bear. Bear it nobly! 

I was in the West where they partly love and partly hate the 
Yankee. A man undertook to explain the difference between a watch 
made in Boston and one made in Chicago. He asked me what I 


190 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

thought of it. I answered him as a Boston man should: “We always 
do what we undertake to do thoroughly.” That is Boston. Boston 
has set the example of doing; do better. Sir Robert Peel said in the 
last hours of his life, “I have left the Queen’s service; I have held 
the highest offices in the gift of the Crown; and now, going out of 
public life (he had just removed bread from the tax-list), the happiest 
thought I have is that when the poor man breaks his bread in his 
cottage, he thanks God that I ever lived.” Fellow-citizens, the 
warmest compliment I ever heard was breathed into my ears from 
the lips of a fugitive from South Carolina. In his hovel at home he 
said, “I thank God for Boston; and I hope before I die I may tread 
upon its pavements.” Boston has meant liberty and protection. 
See to it in all coming time, young men and women , you make it stand 
for good learning, upright character, sturdy love of liberty, willingness 
to be and do for others as you would have others be and do unto you. 
But make it, young men and women, make it a dread to every one 
who seeks to do evil. Make it a home and a refuge for the oppressed 
of all lands. 


CHAPTER XII 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 

In planning a speech, one of the important things is to deter¬ 
mine precisely what one wishes to accomplish. The emphasis 
is on the word precisely , for vagueness or cloudiness of thought 
here is fatal to effective results. 

All public speaking is purposeful. It aims to convey ideas 
and feelings with a sufficient degree of force and vividness to 
enable the speaker to attain his end, whatever that may be. 
The end sought is always some definite response on the part 
of the listeners. A speaker therefore must always have one 
eye on the group he expects to address. He must ask himself, 
what response do I want to get from my audience? Do I want 
them to understand something, do something, or just have a 
good time? On the answer depends the kind of speech he is 
going to make. 

That is what we mean when we say that speaking is objective. 
It is not enough to have good ideas and noble feelings; you 
must express them in terms of symbols — words, voice, action 
— that come vividly into the lives and experiences of your lis¬ 
teners. As Henry Ward Beecher put it, a speech is not to be 
regarded as “ a Chinese fire-cracker, to be fired off for the noise 
it makes.” It is to be regarded rather as a flight of arrows that 
must find their way into the minds of your listeners. You 
must hit your target or you accomplish nothing. A hunter 
may have a good gun and fancy ammunition, but unless he 
brings down his game, he is simply making noise, and filling 
the air with smoke. The reason so much of speech fails of its 
purpose is that it is aimed at nothing, and when we aim at noth¬ 
ing we always hit it. The first thing we have to do, then, is to 
take aim. 

191 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


192 

Taking Aim in Speaking. In taking aim in speaking we are 
face to face with the fact that the human mind is many-sided, 
and we cannot hope to touch it on all sides at the same time. 
Man is, for example, a being that understands, or can be made 
to understand. He is also a being that reasons, and by virtue 
of his reasoning powers he expresses judgment in the form of 
belief or disbelief. He is also a being that feels, or experiences 
emotion. He is capable, moreover, of experiencing pleasure 
and pain. In these beliefs and emotions are the main springs 
of action. 

Now, we may address the understanding and aim to make an 
idea clear; we may address the judgment and aim to win belief; 
we may address ourselves to the feelings and aim to arouse 
emotion; or we may enlist the fancy and aim to entertain. 
As a rule, no speaker addresses himself to all these at the same 
time, although all may be involved in a single speech. We 
have, therefore, to consider the different kinds of speeches one 
may be called upon to make, on the basis of these different 
kinds of appeal. 

Writers on the subject are not altogether agreed as to how 
best to classify speeches. No classification so far made is alto¬ 
gether satisfactory, and very likely no one can be found that is. 
The functions of the human mind defy accurate classification. 
It is not to our purpose here to go too minutely into these dif¬ 
ferences of opinion, for it would take us too far afield into the 
psychology of human behavior. A brief survey, however, of 
these views will be in order. 

General Ends in Speaking. Aristotle recognized three divi¬ 
sions of oratory: deliberative, judicial, and demonstrative. By 
these he meant the oratory of the political assembly, of the 
bar, and of the popular forum. Quintillian, in his Institutes 
of Oratory , concludes that public address may serve any one 
of three primary ends; namely, “to inform, to move, and to 
please.” If we interpret the word “move” to be equivalent to 
“persuade,” this classification is worth remembering, for we 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


193 

shall find that it fits in strangely well with present-day psy¬ 
chology. 

Of modern writers on the subject of public address, Arthur 
Edward Phillips, in his Effective Speaking, was the first to 
depart somewhat radically from the old classification. He 
recognizes five ends of speech: (1) clearness; (2) impressive¬ 
ness; (3) belief; (faction; (5) entertainment. James Winans 
in his Public Speaking considers the speaker’s purposes to be: 
(1) to interest; (2) to make clear; (3) to induce belief; (4) to 
influence conduct. O’Neill and Weaver in The Elements of 
Speech recognize five speech purposes: (1) to instruct; (2) to 
convince; (3) to actuate; (4) to impress; (5) to entertain. It 
will be seen that this follows Phillips rather closely. Charles H. 
Woolbert in Fundamentals of Speech treats four general purposes: 
(1) to divert; (2) to stimulate; (3) to inform; (4) to convince. 
Sandford and Yeager in Principles of Effective Speaking reduce 
the general ends to three: (1) to inform; (2) to persuade; 
(3) to entertain. 

If we make allowance for some variations in terminology, 
we readily see that there is virtual agreement among these 
writers regarding at least two speech ends; namely, information 
and entertainment. It is only within the field of persuasive 
speaking that there is real divergence of opinion. Here, some 
give three general ends, others two, and one authority makes 
no division. Without undertaking to analyze these ends, for 
the purpose of finding points of agreement, and perhaps some 
points of difference, let us look at the problem from a somewhat 
different angle. 

The Hierarchy of Beliefs. I believe it will be found on exam¬ 
ination that in persuasive speaking the speaker is always dealing 
with beliefs, beliefs that vary greatly in their efficacy or power 
to influence human behavior. Some of our beliefs are absolute 
and dynamic, and operate with full force to influence conduct; 
others are wavering and doubtful; still others are dormant or 
dead. We believe, for example, that gravitation and other 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


194 

natural laws are at work all the time, and that if we do not 
order our lives in harmony with those laws, we are liable to get 
into trouble. If, for example, we throw a stone or shoot an 
arrow into the air, we take it for granted that it will come down, 
and prefer not to take a chance on getting in its path. So 
there are numberless beliefs in the social sphere that are reason¬ 
ably dynamic and operate with a fair degree of adequacy as 
determinants of behavior. Such we disregard at our peril. 
Others operate with more or less inadequacy. If the weather 
man tells us that tomorrow is going to be “fair/’ we shall 
probably believe it — 85 % if we happen to know that there is 
about 15 % error in such predictions. We may think we believe 
the time-honored principle, “Blessed are they that are perse¬ 
cuted for righteousness’ sake,” but most of us would be willing 
that some one else should get the benefit of the experience. 

These examples will perhaps suffice to show that in human 
society there is a hierarchy of beliefs which operate in varying 
degrees to influence human conduct. They range from those 
that are unqualified and dynamic, which no normal person 
would ever think of disregarding in ordering his life, down the 
scale to those other beliefs that operate hardly at all as deter¬ 
minants of behavior. The potency of any particular belief 
varies with different individuals. 

For speech-making purposes, it will be found convenient, I 
believe, to classify beliefs on the basis of our attitude toward 
them. Broadly speaking, either we accept a belief or we do not. 
We meet with many propositions, it is true, embodying beliefs 
that we are doubtful about or indifferent to, largely because we 
do not understand their implications. In such cases, it cannot 
be said that we accept them; and they would therefore fall 
into the latter class. Broadly, then, we may divide beliefs into 
two classes; those that we accept and do not significantly dis¬ 
pute, and those that we do not accept. 

Within each class, we may recognize a gradation of beliefs in 
reference to the extent to which they function in behavior; or, 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


J 95 

in the case of unaccepted beliefs, in regard to our hostility to 
them. We may accept one belief and act on it consistently; 
we may accept another and merely give it lip service. Much 
depends on the nature of the beliefs, how closely they touch 
our lives. In the case of disputed or unaccepted beliefs, we 
may be merely indifferent or in doubt, owing to lack of under¬ 
standing of the facts involved; or we may be positively hostile. 
The more indifferent or hostile we are, the greater, of course, is 
the persuasive problem. 

It is my opinion that each of these two classes of beliefs gives 
rise to a somewhat distinct type of speech, both of which we 
may consider briefly. 

A. Speeches Dealing with Accepted Beliefs or Undisputed 
Propositions. We all recognize the fact that some of the best 
subjects for speeches are to be found in propositions that em¬ 
body accepted beliefs and are not in any significant sense dis¬ 
puted. For example, “We should meet our appointments 
promptly” is a good subject for a class speech. No one will 
dispute that seriously, and consequently no evidential support 
is needed in the sense in which we are accustomed to under¬ 
stand that term. Neither do we have to go through a long rig¬ 
marole of expounding the meaning of the question, defining 
terms, giving the history of the question, lining up contentions 
on both sides, selecting the issues, and finally proving the issues 
with a long array of facts, figures, statistics, authorities, and 
more or less involved reasoning processes. Strictly speaking, 
there are no issues to prove, for an issue is always a disputed 
proposition, as we shall see later. 

It is perfectly clear that while we give general assent — 
“mental assent” — to the proposition, we do not always order 
our behavior in conformity with it. There are people who are 
always late in keeping their appointments and thereby waste 
other people’s precious time and jeopardize in some measure 
their own chances of success. The speech problem here is 
obviously to appeal to personal interests — to such motives as 


ig 6 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

ambition, reputation, fairness; to show that the effort necessary 
for promptness in keeping engagements will yield handsome 
dividends in return; in short, to charge the proposition with 
feeling and emotion and make it dynamic so that action of the 
right kind may follow. To do this, we may cite examples of men 
who have lost the confidence of their associates through being 
careless and undependable in keeping important engagements. 
We may also cite examples of men who have been appointed 
or promoted to responsible positions, in part at least as a result 
of being prompt and dependable. We may even quote great 
executives as to the value of forming habits of promptness, and 
in other ways bring to bear on the proposition as many and 
varied forms of support as are available. 

The speaker here is concerned primarily with appeal to 
motives; that is, desires, feelings, and emotions that tend to 
action. His aim will be to link up this precept of promptness 
with the vital interests of the audience, by means of specific, 
concrete, vivid speech materials; to impress upon the hearers 
the value of dependable promptness in keeping important en¬ 
gagements as a factor iji a successful life. 

B. Speeches Dealing with Unaccepted Beliefs or Disputed 
Propositions. Let us now consider the problem which a speaker 
faces in establishing and making dynamic an unaccepted belief 
embodied in a disputed proposition. 

In this type of speech we distinguish two kinds of propositions, 
which go by several names. If we are disposed to use philo¬ 
sophical language, we may call them judgments of fact and 
judgments of value. If we prefer less technical language, we 
may use the terms, propositions of fact and propositions of 
policy. It does not make a great deal of difference what terms 
we use provided we are agreed on the meaning. To say that 
chain stores provide substantial economies for their customers 
is to express a judgment of fact. So it is also a judgment of 
fact to say that the St. Lawrence waterway is feasible from an 
engineering point of view, or that the League of Nations has 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


197 

prevented wars, assuming that to be true, or that automobile 
accidents killed over 35,000 people in 1932. The problem here 
is to prove these propositions true or false. This is the func¬ 
tion of evidence and logical argument, and perhaps suggestion 
as well. The process of establishing the truth or falsity of 
these propositions has nothing to do with their social signifi¬ 
cance, or their interpretation in terms of the human values 
that may depend on them. In other words, it has nothing to 
do with motivation. 

As examples of judgments of value, or propositions of policy, 
we may list almost any question for debate or argument. 
The United States should join with Canada in building the 
St. Lawrence waterway; compulsory military drill should be 
abolished in our colleges; a state income tax should supplement 
general property taxes — these are familiar examples. Almost 
invariably questions are argued or debated in this form. One 
might have a lively debate on the question whether the Ameri¬ 
can protective tariff has been a burden on agriculture, which is 
purely a proposition of fact; but more often resolutions for de¬ 
bate involve questions of policy. It will be observed that all 
these questions lend themselves to motivation. That is, they 
raise the question: What is their social significance? What are 
they worth to society — or more particularly, from the point 
of view of the speaker, to the audience addressed — in human 
values, in satisfying human wants? Only so far as the speaker 
can interpret for his hearers the significance or value of these 
propositions and bring such value vividly home to them can he 
make such beliefs function in behavior. 

It will be observed that, strictly speaking, propositions of 
policy (judgments of value) cannot be proved true or false. We 
may be able to prove true or false the propositions of fact on 
which they rest, but the propositions themselves, more ac¬ 
curately speaking, we evaluate , show what they are worth in 
terms of human satisfactions. We do not prove true or false 
the proposition that the United States should cancel the war 


198 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

debts owed it by European nations; but by a careful exam¬ 
ination of the facts involved we can interpret the meaning or 
value of the proposition, and on the basis of such evaluation 
win acceptance, and perhaps get active support, for it — make 
it function in behavior. It would be in the interest of accurate 
language, I believe, if we should limit the word proof to propo¬ 
sitions of fact. Propositions of policy we support or evaluate . 
Every teacher of speech must have felt how unsatisfactory is 
the word proof to describe the support of propositions in an 
impressive speech, or propositions of policy in an argumentative 
speech. As a matter of fact, there is usually nothing to prove 
in an impressive speech. We do not prove that we ought to 
keep our appointments promptly, or be loyal to our convictions, 
or do a thousand other things that we may advocate in a 
speech. We admit it all beforehand. The problem is one of 
creating or interpreting values, of setting up a system of 
rewards in the minds of the audience, of making them want to 
do the things we want them to do. The problem, that is to 
say, is purely one of motivation. 

The fact remains that, in this type of speech, propositions of 
fact generally predominate. It is precisely because there are 
so many propositions of fact at issue in question argued or 
debated that the argumentative speech always deals with dis¬ 
puted ideas or beliefs. 

Take as an example the question: The United States should 
join the League of Nations. This is a proposition of policy. 
Whether such a policy is sound, whether its adoption would 
redound to the benefit of America, depends in turn on several 
questions of fact; for example: Has the League, in some measure 
at least, prevented war or conflict among nations? Is it likely 
to do so increasingly in the future? Is the League dominated 
by two or three large European powers? On the answer to 
these questions and many others — all questions of fact — will 
depend the soundness of the policy of joining the League. 
When once these questions are answered favorably to the 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


199 

League, assuming that the facts warrant it, then it becomes a 
simple matter to interpret the value of such an organization to 
human society. On that subject, most people are motivated 
in advance. 

There is no doubt that beliefs not accepted vary greatly both 
in regard to the difficulty of proving true the propositions of fact 
on which they rest and in point of difficulty of evaluating them 
or motivating an audience in regard to them. The audience 
attitude may be, “ We might accept your proposition, but what 
is it good for in satisfying our wants? ” In other cases, it may 
be difficult to prove true the propositions of fact on which a 
judgment of value rests, and easy to motivate an audience in 
regard to it if the facts are proved favorable. There are times 
when an audience is motivated in advance in regard to a policy 
and asks only to be shown that the facts are favorable. As 
already suggested, that might be true of an audience assembled 
to hear a speech on the League of Nations. The audience 
attitude might be, “Show us that the League will prevent war 
and that it is not dominated by two or three European powers 
(or whatever the facts in dispute may be) and we will be with 
you.” Still, even here, if the members of an audience were 
asked to make contributions to further the cause, they might 
need some motivation on the subject. It would probably be 
necessary to appeal to their feelings and emotions by presenting 
to them vivid images of what war does to us and what we would 
escape by making the League function. 

On the other hand, a belief that might be easily supported as 
to the facts, and difficult in regard to evaluation or motivation, 
might be, “We should discourage the organization of chain 
stores.” It would be easy to show that chain stores effect sub¬ 
stantial economies for their customers, that they tend to wealth 
concentration, and that their local managers are seldom perma¬ 
nent residents of a community. We should recognize the first 
of these effects to be good, and the second and third bad. The 
real problem, however, is to discover how good is the first, and 


200 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


how bad are the other two. That is a process of evaluation or 
motivation. In a question like this, it is fair to say that the 
real problem is one of motivation. 

The alert speaker will always be on his guard to analyze 
carefully his speech problem and determine where his heavy 
artillery is most needed. If his problem is primarily that of 
proving true a proposition of fact, or establishing the probable 
correctness of an opinion, then he must center his energies in 
that direction. If the problem is essentially one of motivation, 
then he must proceed to meet that. If the persuasive problem 
involves both of these, then the speaker will order his attack 
accordingly. One thing he should never forget, and that is 
that he is dealing with a belief that does not properly motivate 
the behavior of his audience, and that it is his business to make 
such belief dynamic, prove it true if it is seriously denied; in¬ 
terpret its affective meaning to the audience, if that is necessary, 
by charging it with feeling and emotion, and linking it up with 
vital life interests of the listeners. 

Degrees of Belief. We see from these examples that the same 
belief may have gradations of meaning for different individuals. 
One man may believe vaguely and uncertainly that he should 
keep his appointments promptly, and order his behavior ac¬ 
cordingly. Another man may believe it to the point of deep 
conviction and act upon it consistently. One may entertain a 
kind of belief about the efficacy of the League of Nations to 
prevent war, which means next to nothing so far as influencing 
his conduct is concerned; or one may be fired with a flaming 
enthusiasm for it — believe in it so firmly as to give generously 
of his time and means to support it. 

Belief and Action. The degree of belief in which a speaker is 
interested is the one that results in action or influences conduct. 
That is always the goal. The goal, of course, may not be 
attained at a single bound or in a single speech. Perhaps it is 
fair to say that there are no absolute beliefs in the social sphere. 
It is hardly possible to say that a man can be made one hundred 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


201 


per cent courteous or prompt in keeping appointments, or one 
hundred per cent solicitous about preventing automobile acci¬ 
dents; or that he can be made to love his neighbor fully up to 
the Biblical injunction. Everything is relative. That speech 
best accomplishes its purpose which renders the belief it aims 
to vitalize most potent for influencing behavior. No definite, 
overt action need be contemplated; nevertheless, influencing 
action in some way is always the end of all persuasive speeches. 
A speaker may advocate temperance not only in consuming 
liquor but in all things, without having any definite, overt 
action in mind. Still, the more strongly an audience is moti¬ 
vated in regard to such belief, and the more potent such belief 
is made for influencing conduct, the more fully is the speech 
end attained. 

Again, a speaker may have in mind a definite, overt action on 
the part of the audience. The overt action aimed at may be 
immediate or remote. A speaker, for instance, may ask for a 
vote on some question or resolution, or for a contribution to 
some cause. The action is definite and immediate. Or he may 
ask for a vote for a political candidate three months hence. 
The action is definite and remote. Even when no definite, 
overt action is aimed at, it is no less true that motivation is the 
process by which the end is attained, and as a rule the end is 
accomplished through making the necessary or appropriate 
belief potent and dynamic so that it will bear fruition in action. 

In all these cases, the aim is to influence conduct, and whether 
it be to get definite, overt, immediate action or to set up atti¬ 
tudes or action tendencies — predispositions to act in a certain 
way — that will result in the appropriate conduct when the 
occasion presents itself, the persuasive problem is essentially the 
same. As William James 1 puts it: “A resolve, whose contem¬ 
plated motor consequences are not to ensue until some far dis¬ 
tant future condition shall have been fulfilled, involves all the 
psychic elements of a motor fiat except the word ‘ Now 

1 Selected Papers on Philosophy (Everyman’s Library, 1917), p. 69. 


202 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

The Problem of Persuasion. The problem of persuasion, then, 
is to take any so-called belief, no matter on what level or of 
what degree, and lift it to the level of dynamic action, by 
charging it with a richer meaning and more vital interest for 
the listeners. The degree of belief at the outset may vary from 
anything short of willingness to act upon it consistently, to 
open hostility or disbelief. It is difficult to give good examples 
of gradations of belief, especially as persons differ in regard to 
them. Most persons probably would give mental assent to the 
proposition that educated men and women should take an 
interest in public questions, but still the subject offers large 
opportunities for persuasion, for our behavior falls far short 
of squaring with our so-called belief. An easier persuasive prob¬ 
lem would be to support properly the proposition that all 
drivers should stop at railroad crossings to prevent accidents. 
The persuasive problem becomes, of course, much more difficult 
when we get into the field of beliefs that are in doubt or in dis¬ 
pute, and reaches its maximum with an audience openly hostile 
to the speaker’s purpose. There are problems in persuasion 
that any speaker of good taste will let alone. Deep-seated 
prejudices or convictions, religious, social, economic, political, 
are not easily set aside. Still, almost anything may be under¬ 
taken if done in the right spirit and in good taste. A person 
can say almost anything if he says it in the right way. 

What is an adequate support to give a proposition in a per¬ 
suasive speech? That depends altogether on the proposition. 
If the belief is vague, or dormant, or dead, it may require 
heroic support to make it dynamic. Then again, sometimes a 
single fact may flash conviction on us. If we are about to enter 
a house and see a smallpox sign on it, the sign alone creates at 
once an understanding of the situation, a very definite belief 
and a resultant action. A single statement of fact here sets off 
all our predispositions to avoid situations dangerous to health 
and life. A speaker may frequently, by touching off well 
selected thought and emotional patterns of the audience, seize 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


203 

upon short cuts to desired ends. This is dealt with at length 
in Chapter X, “Motivation: Suggestion.” 

On the other hand, I may — and once did — listen to a 
colored orator discourse for an hour or more on the need and 
merits of industrial schools for negroes in the South. On the 
strength of facts and examples presented, I am made to believe 

— give tacit assent to — the proposition that these schools are 
worthy enterprises. As a result of pictures drawn of the handi¬ 
caps under which these schools operate for lack of funds, I 
am moved to sympathy with the heroic efforts put forth in 
behalf of these schools. By skillful appeal to motives I am 
made to feel that the welfare of the whole country, my own 
included, depends on giving negroes adequate education and 
fair opportunities. By a final appeal to self-interest and patri¬ 
otism, I am led to subscribe to the cause of these schools. Here 
the speaker has to run the whole gamut of appeal — exposition, 
logical argument, suggestion, and motivation in various forms 

— before his purpose is accomplished. 

The Two Types of Persuasive Speeches Distinguished. It is 
plain that the two types of speeches given above — the one 
on keeping appointments and the one on the League of Nations 

— have much in common. Both aim to influence human be¬ 
havior and are therefore persuasive. Both appeal to motives 
and emotions and have action as the general end, at least in¬ 
sofar as they aim to make beliefs more potent in determining 
conduct. Both may require almost any form or all forms of 
support. There are, however, some distinctions to be made. 
The speech on keeping appointments promptly deals with an 
accepted belief or undisputed proposition. The first requires 
very little exposition to make its meaning clear; the second 
requires much exposition. In the first, the appeal is very 
largely to the feelings and emotions — motives; in the second, 
the appeal is in part to the understanding and judgment, but 
also to the feelings and emotions. (It is in its failure to appeal 
to motives or emotions that the traditional argumentative 


204 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


speech falls down.) In the first speech, certain forms of sup¬ 
port would predominate, such as general and concrete examples, 
all forms of illustrations, and the literary quotation; in the 
second, the predominant forms of support would be logical 
argument or reasoning processes, facts, figures, statistics, 
authorities, and analogies. Both speeches may use all the forms 
of support, but in each the predominating forms will be as 
suggested. 

On the basis of these differences we may distinguish two 
kinds of persuasive speeches: (i) persuasive speeches dealing 
with accepted beliefs —- which we will call impressive speeches; 
(2) persuasive speeches dealing with unaccepted beliefs, or 
argumentative speeches. 

Classification of Speeches. We are now prepared to divide 
speeches roughly into four classes: 


Informative 



Entertaining 


These classifications are somewhat arbitrary, since an in¬ 
formative speech may be entertaining and more or less impres¬ 
sive; while an argumentative speech may be at once informative, 
impressive, and entertaining. While there is this overlapping, 
the classification is nevertheless useful and practical. 

Let us now try to understand clearly what we really mean 
by these distinctions, and how they may serve a speaker in 
attaining his speech purposes. 

A. The Informative Speech. There are many occasions when 
the aim of a speaker is primarily to impart information as such, 
and in as clear and impartial a manner as possible. Information 
so given may be more or less entertaining and more or less 
impressive, but these aspects are incidental. The primary pur¬ 
pose of this type of speech is to expound, inform, or instruct, 
and this fact governs largely the choice of materials and treat- 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


205 

ment of the subject. Classroom lectures are usually regarded 
as of this type, although they may often involve acceptance as 
well. The charge of a judge to a jury is essentially informative. 
Scientific lectures are usually of this class, like Agassiz’s lecture, 
“Man and Monkeys,” and Huxley’s lecture, “On a Piece of 
Chalk.” A description of a mechanical device, like an electric 
transformer, or an explanation of a policy, like the Monroe 
Doctrine, or a theory, like Evolution, will be of the informative 
type. 

Here are a few typical subjects for informative speeches. All 
of them lend themselves to expository treatment; that is, to 
the expounding of their meaning. Many of them would also 
lend themselves to treatment for other ends. 


I. 

The Organization of the 

16. 

The Organization of the 


League of Nations 


Farm Board 

2. 

The Kellogg Pact 

i 7 - 

Fascism: What is it? 

3 - 

The United States of Europe 

18. 

Bolshevism: What is it? 

4 * 

The British Labor Party 

19. 

Profit-Sharing in Business 

5 - 

Espionage Legislation 

20. 

Legumes and Soil Improve¬ 

6. 

Communism: What is it? 


ment 

7 - 

The Malthusian Theory 

21. 

Benjamin Franklin’s Plan for 

8. 

New Occupations for Women 


Self-development (See his 

9 - 

Free Speech: What does it 


autobiography.) 


mean? 

22. 

Football Signals 

10. 

Liberty: What is liberty? 

23- 

How Oranges Are Sorted and 

11. 

Road Construction 


Packed 

12. 

Technological Unemploy¬ 

24. 

Milking Machines 


ment 

25 - 

The Operation of the Stock 

13* 

Correct Breathing 


Exchange 

14. 

Vitamins 

26. 

The Single Tax: What is it? 

! 5 - 

The Organization of the 

27. 

The Radio Vacuum Tube 


World Court 

B. The Impressive Speech. This is a persuasive speech deal¬ 
ing with an undisputed proposition or an accepted belief. It 
is sometimes called an inspirational speech, for its aim is pri¬ 
marily to inspire or to stimulate the feelings and emotions in 


206 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


regard to some belief pattern. This type of speech usually 
deals with ideas or beliefs that we accept in a general way, but 
which fail to function adequately in behavior. Many of these 
are to be found in the field of social customs, habits, morals. 
The aim of the impressive speech, therefore, is to vitalize cer¬ 
tain beliefs, to build up for them a system of desires, and make 
them dynamic so that we shall order our behavior more fully 
in accordance with them. As already suggested, no definite, 
overt action need be contemplated, although it may be, and 
frequently is. One may speak on the value of patriotism and 
seek to arouse certain patriotic impulses without having any 
definite, overt action in mind into which such impulses might 
flow. On the other hand, a doctor may, in a five-minute speech 
on the prevention of tuberculosis, give certain definite direc¬ 
tions for detecting early symptoms of the disease and motivate 
an audience to take definite steps for the proper diagnosis and 
treatment. 

Whether the problem be to get definite, overt action, imme¬ 
diate or remote, or merely to charge a belief with a larger and 
more impressive meaning, so that ,it will more adequately func¬ 
tion in behavior, the psychological problem involved is much 
the same. The end is achieved largely through appeal to self- 
interest, in which are to be found the leading motives that impel 
to action. We are all motivated primarily by our desires, wants, 
wishes — fundamental urges, which are the real determinants 
of our behavior. 

There are many examples of these speeches. Virtually all 
sermons are of this type, so far as the ultimate end of such 
discourses is concerned. They may contain much exposition, 
as of Biblical texts, and frequently do, but such exposition has 
for its aim the enriching and vitalizing of beliefs and maxims, 
and to make conduct square with them. It is fair to say that 
most political speeches are of this type. On most occasions, 
the political speaker will content himself with bolstering up old 
convictions and giving solemn praise for things as they are. 



KINDS OF SPEECHES 


207 

This is not necessarily the highest type of political speech, but 
it is the most common one. If old beliefs are assailed, or new 
reforms advocated, the political speech becomes argumentative. 
Such were most of Lincoln’s best known political speeches and 
debates. 

Of this type of speech also are lectures on the lyceum and 
Chautauqua — if they go beyond the bounds of mere humor. 
This was especially true of the older lyceum, which counted 
among its devotees such distinguished lecturers as Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, 
Wendell Phillips, Thomas Starr King, and Robert Ingersoll. 
No one of these men ever made a lyceum speech with entertain¬ 
ment only as the end. They had a very definite message and 
aimed to “enrich the brain, ennoble the heart and quicken the 
conscience.” Of later lyceum lecturers who exemplify this 
type of speaking may be mentioned William Jennings Bryan 
and Russell H. Conwell, both of whom exerted great influence 
through their distinguished careers on the platform. 

In this class also must be included almost all eulogies — that 
is, speeches dealing with the lives and characters of great men. 
The primary aim of a eulogy is to hold up certain distinctive 
character and personality traits as examples to the living. 
Occasional addresses, such as the commencement address, com¬ 
memorative address, address of welcome, farewell address, and 
others are of this class. It will be seen that this type of speech 
includes many of the most popular forms of public address. 

That the eulogy is essentially an impressive type of speech 
hardly admits of doubt. Suppose we should choose to make a 
speech on the character of Lincoln, and select certain distinc¬ 
tive traits like (1) Lincoln’s honesty; (2) his kindliness; (3) his 
tolerance of other persons’ views. Few would take issue with 
any of these, and still we recognize in this a good subject for a 
speech. Our aim would be to present these traits of Lincoln’s 
in such a way that they would serve as examples to the rest of 
us who are groping our way towards a richer and more meaning- 


208 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


ful life. Such a speech, if well made, would set up certain emo¬ 
tional attitudes and action tendencies that might find fruition 
in a better-ordered behavior. 

I recently heard an excellent eulogy of George Washington, 
based largely on a three-volume biography recently completed. 
In his introduction the speaker remarked, “If I can build one 
stone into the characters of those who hear me, I shall feel that 
I have not spoken in vain.” Again he said toward the close of 
the speech, “If the marble lips of his many statues could 
speak to us of the present generation, what would they say?” 
It is plain that the speaker conceived his purpose to be to 
inspire and motivate the living by holding before them the 
virtues and achievements of the illustrious dead. 

Like the political speech, the eulogy is apt to shade off into 
the argumentative type. Such is Wendell Phillips’ eulogy of 
Toussaint L’Ouverture, and in a measure, also, his eulogy of 
Daniel O’Connell. Phillips occupied such advanced ground in 
thinking that he usually was at odds with his contemporaries. 
The fact remains that most eulogies will be found to be of the 
impressive type of speech. The aim of a eulogy is to influence 
human behavior; and, as a rule, to avoid controversy. 

Here are a few propositions and subjects which you can use 
for this type of speech. Note that the truth of any or of all of 
the propositions is not seriously disputed, and still we need to 
have these truths impressed upon us from time to time. All of 
them deal with human conduct, either directly or indirectly. 
The aim is to give fuller meaning to truths to which we only 
give lip service; to make our conduct square more fully with 
our professed ideals. On the subjects given, formulate propo¬ 
sitions that are not essentially disputed. 

1. Educated men have a public duty to perform. 

2. Intemperance is a vice. 

3. Intolerance is a mistake. 

4. New occasions teach new duties. 

5. Our biggest opportunities are near at hand. 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


209 


6. “Want appeal” in speaking is important. 

7. The life of Benjamin Franklin (or some one else) is an inspiration. 

8. Lincoln (or some one else) was a great patriot. 

9. Woodrow Wilson (or some one else) was a great President. 

10. Theodore Roosevelt (or some one else) was an interesting per¬ 
sonality. 

11. Mental health is a requisite to wholesome living. 

12. The challenge of youth. 

13. The uses of courage. 

14. The decay of the home. 

15. Our hostility to new ideas. 

16. The scholar in a republic. 

17. Truth in advertising. 

18. The full life. 

19. The value of ideals. 

20. Democracy and education. 

21. Courage of youth. 

22. The battle of life. 

23. Struggle for social justice. 

24. American ideals. 

25. Bread and Lilies. 

C. The Argumentative Speech. The chief earmark of the 
argumentative type of speech is that it deals with unaccepted 
beliefs or disputed propositions that require evidential support. 
The purpose here is always to win acceptance for an idea or 
proposition, the truth of which is in doubt or in dispute, and 
to vitalize it for influencing conduct. Action is, therefore, 
always the end of an argumentative speech. The action may 
be as already stated definite and immediate, or nearly so, as 
when Bryan made his speech in behalf of Woodrow Wilson at 
the Democratic Convention at Baltimore in 1912; or it may 
be more or less remote, as when some one speaks for the League 
of Nations, in the hope that some day the United States may 
join. It should be noted, however, that while the specific or 
overt action intended may be remote, the aim is always to 
dispose men’s minds favorably, or to set up attitudes that may 


210 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


immediately find expression in behavior favorable to the policy 
advocated. I may hear a convincing speech on the League of 
Nations and acquire a new attitude on the subject which will 
lead me to support the League when opportunity presents. 

The argumentative speech is always controversial. It deals 
with propositions which some people affirm and others deny. 
Advocates are ranged on both sides. Shall we join the World 
Court? Shall we encourage students to go to a small college 
rather than to a large university? Shall we require Latin in 
the high school? All these are controversial. They have two 
sides either of which can be argued. In a speech on this kind 
of subject, the primary problem may be to remove doubt and 
win acceptance for the proposition. This requires evidential 
support, sometimes extensive. It also may require skillful ap¬ 
peal to motives and emotions that impel to action. 

Argumentative speeches abound. All debates are of this 
class. Some political speeches, if they possess merit, will be of 
this type, although not many are. Speeches in deliberative 
assemblies — legislature, congress, parliament — are usually 
argumentative. In general, wherever a person or a group of 
persons seriously consider reasons and facts pro and con for 
doing something, or for adopting a policy, their deliberations 
will come within the scope of this end. It matters not whether 
it be within the family, club, community, state, or nation — 
the purpose would be the same; namely, to get belief or win 
acceptance for an idea, and set up attitudes that will result in 
favorable action. 

Here are a few propositions you can use for speeches of the 
argumentative type. Observe that all these propositions are 
disputed. They are debatable. They have two sides. You 
can make a speech in support of either side. Choose the side 
that appeals to you. 

1. Are our industries overexpanded? 

2. Can we escape periodic depressions? 

3. Does capital punishment deter crime? 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


211 


4. Are athletics interfering too much with college education? 

5. Should lobbying be condemned? 

6. Is national income in the United States fairly distributed? 

7. Should farming by corporations on a large scale be encouraged? 

8. Can we instil patriotism by compulsory flag-waving or salute? 

9. Should workingmen organize a Labor Party in the United States? 

10. Are chain stores detrimental to our best interests? 

11. Is the small college to be preferred to the big university? 

12. Should there be national supervision of the production of moving 
pictures? 

13. Is installment buying on a large scale sound economic practice? 

14. Should house-to-house selling be prohibited? 

D. The Entertainment Speech. We recognize a type of 
speech that has for its primary end entertainment. So-called 
after-dinner speeches, or some of them at least, fall within this 
class. We have on record a few lectures that are distinctly 
humorous and aim to serve no other end than entertainment. 
There are not many of them, and it is safe to say that only 
born humorists or eccentric geniuses can make them successful. 
Perhaps the most notable of these lectures is “The Mormons” 
by Charles Farrar Browne (Artemus Ward). Speeches at class 
reunions and group gatherings to commemorate some event 
probably would stress the entertainment feature. There may 
be some Chautauqua lectures, also, that properly belong to this 
class, although most of the worth-while ones have some ulterior 
aim besides mere entertainment. 

Very few speeches, as a matter of fact, are made solely for 
entertainment purposes. It is a mistake to suppose that after- 
dinner speeches should consist merely of funny stories and jokes. 
Our published models certainly do not bear out that idea. The 
better class of after-dinner speeches have a more or less definite 
message, and frequently give expression to sentiments that are 
vital and dignified. 

It may be said that an after-dinner speech may be almost 
anything from a few casual remarks with perhaps a story 


212 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


attached — hardly worthy the name of a speech — to a some¬ 
what lengthy and dignified discourse. It may also be said that 
a speech given after a dinner is not necessarily an after-dinner 
speech. A candidate for President comes to a city, is feted at 
a banquet, and then talks about political issues for an hour 
and a half. That is not an after-dinner speech. What we mean 
by an after-dinner speech, usually, is a rather short, light, 
informal, humorous speech. It may or may not have a defi¬ 
nite message. The more lengthy and better ones usually do. 

The Entertainment Factor in Public Address. As for the place 
of entertainment in public lectures or addresses of the persuasive 
type, it may be said that there is often a temptation on the 
part of speakers to give it undue prominence. The following 
comment from Glenn Frank, himself an accomplished speaker, 
is worth heeding. 

The attempt of the average lecturer to entertain has been the in¬ 
tellectual damnation of the present-day lecture platform. There is, 
of course, no excuse for the man who talks dully of great things, and 
then damns the stupidity of the people for walking away from him. 
The unpardonable sin of the platform is the sin of being uninteresting. 
But what would have happened to the public influence of those sturdy 
old publicists, the Hebrew prophets, if they had spent their time 
spinning yarns just to capture the applause of Israel? I mean no 
indictment of men who create their own material and cast it into 
fiction or character form. While such men entertain in the highest 
sense, their entertainment only wings the arrows of their philosophy. 
They are in the royal succession of real lecturers. Nor is reference 
intended to men who wisely use a story to illuminate a truth. Lincoln 
would weave a story into an address in a manner that visualized a 
principle, as a steel engraving or wood-cut adds to the appeal of a book. 
But such men never drag in a story to recapture an audience that ab¬ 
sence of thought has lost. 1 

We must of course distinguish sharply between mere enter¬ 
tainment and interestingness. Entertainment, by which we mean 
1 An American Looks at His World (1932), p. 67. 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


213 

primarily the humorous element in a speech, is only one factor 
in interestingness. A speech is interesting, we say, when it 
holds the attention of those who listen, but not all methods of 
holding attention have equal value for accomplishing worth¬ 
while ends in speaking. We have on more than one occasion 
in this text stressed the idea that a speech, in order to be inter¬ 
esting in the best sense, must touch vitally and vividly funda¬ 
mental human interests. Whatever entertainment a speech 
affords should seem at least to spring naturally out of the 
development of the theme and the speech materials used. One 
man will treat a serious subject in such a way as to get a great 
deal of humor out of it, while moving to a definite goal, without 
seeming to go out of his way at all. Another man will treat 
the same subject and be unable to find any speech materials 
that yield genuine humor unless he goes out of his way to do so. 
There is no harm in a humorous story if it illuminates a point 
or, by subtle suggestion, points a moral. The harm comes in 
using it as an end in itself. It is a safe rule to follow that any 
speech materials that are introduced for the sake of amusement 
and not for the sake of advancing the end of the speech are 
better left out. 

Let us not overlook, however, the fact that public lecturing 
is an art. It is not enough to have something to say; one must 
know how to say it. There is such a thing in a speech as charm 
of style and diction, in which humor and originality no doubt 
play a large part. Many good lectures have in them that which 
makes them enjoyable. They possess distinctive literary qual¬ 
ities. An examination of them will reveal this to a marked 
degree. One has but to read some of the speeches of platform 
masters like Thomas Starr King, Robert Ingersoll, George W. 
Curtis, and others to be impressed with their rhythmic charm 
and beauty. Among present-day speakers, Glenn Frank excels 
in the power to make truth palatable. His speeches exemplify 
not only virile thinking, but more than ordinary felicity of 
phrase and picturesqueness of style. They have what Emerson 


214 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


would call power of statement; that is, power to state an issue 
in such a way that it cannot be disregarded. Thought cannot 
be separated from the language that expresses it. 

Radio Talks and “Showmanship.” Radio managers stress 
the importance of “showmanship” in the preparation of talks 
over the radio, especially in educational programs. The criti¬ 
cism is that educators are poor “showmen,” and that they have 
not the knack of presenting their ideas in such a way as to 
interest any large portion of the people. The theory is that 
the “general public” is a thirteen-year-old in its capacity to 
understand and assimilate knowledge, and that any mental 
diet offered it must not only be in diluted form, but inter¬ 
spersed with still lighter offerings, presumably in the form of 
popular jazz melodies and other choice bits from the ordinary 
vaudeville menu. In this way only, it is said, can the general 
public be made to “listen in” at all on lectures and other edu¬ 
cational programs. 

Let it be said, first, that “showmanship” is a very poor term 
to apply to a speech, and certainly not a very illuminating one. 
It may be said also that there is very likely some basis for 
criticism here. College professors are accustomed to talk to 
college students in terminology that, in part at least, does not 
pass current outside the campus. If presented to an age level 
of thirteen years, the seed most assuredly would not fall on 
fertile ground. The reason is that the college professor does 
not speak to thirteen-year-olds, and does not have to concern 
himself much about getting an audience. His audiences are 
selected, and are furnished him through the arrangement of 
the curriculum. Students have to listen, whether they like 
it or not. On the radio, no one has to listen. The problem 
here, therefore, is not only to present the information in intel¬ 
ligible form, which is the only requirement of the classroom, 
but also to get an audience to listen to it. Showmanship 
presumably concerns itself with getting an audience on the air 
and holding their attention when there. 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


215 

If by showmanship be meant that a minimum of truth or 
information shall be given, and that vaudeville methods are a 
necessary concomitant of educational programs, the answer is 
that such methods are not needed, and in the long run will 
defeat their own ends. If, on the other hand, showmanship 
means the presentation of ideas in such a way as to make them 
easily understandable and interesting, through simple diction, 
style with a large pictorial element, avoidance of technical 
terms, tactful linking of the talk with fundamental human 
interests, scrupulous regard for attention values or speech ma¬ 
terials that hold the attention of the audience, interpretation 
of ideas and feelings in terms of familiar experiences of the 
listeners, the whole seasoned with a touch of humor and orig¬ 
inality — the answer is, let us have showmanship. We may as 
well realize that in our effort to “humanize” knowledge we 
must cultivate the art of communicating ideas to the public, 
and meet them on the terms on which only they are willing to 
listen. There is no appeal from this popular mandate. 

In Conclusion. We may divide speeches roughly into four 
classes, on the basis of the ends to be attained, or purposes to 
be accomplished: informative speeches, impressive speeches, 
argumentative speeches, and entertainment speeches. Impres¬ 
sive and argumentative speeches are both persuasive, and aim 
to influence’human conduct. They have many things in com¬ 
mon, but are distinguished by the fact that one deals with 
accepted beliefs or undisputed propositions, and the other with 
unaccepted beliefs or disputed propositions. 

The impressive speech deals with ideas or beliefs that we 
acknowledge to be sound, but which do not function adequately 
in behavior. The aim of this type of speech is, therefore, to 
vitalize these beliefs and make them function more fully in 
behavior. 

The argumentative speech takes a proposition that is not 
accepted as a basis for behavior. It may be in doubt, or it may 
be strenuously disputed. The speech aims not only to win 


2 l6 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


acceptance for the proposition which expresses its purpose, but 
also to interpret its worth to us in fundamental human inter¬ 
ests, in its capacity to gratify human desires, and satisfy human 
wants. In this latter aspect, its problem is much the same as 
that of the impressive speech, although the emphasis may, and 
often does, fall on the process of proving true the propositions 
of fact involved. To emphasize one process at the expense of 
the other is liable to give an unbalanced argumentative speech. 
Something depends on the nature of the proposition. It may 
be difficult to get at the facts and easy to show the importance 
of the proposition to us if the facts are found favorable. Or 
it may be easy to get at the facts and difficult to evaluate the 
proposition. The speaker is the final judge as to what is the 
most judicious treatment to give a speech, after all the factors 
of the speech situation are considered — speaker, audience, 
occasion. 

The informative speech aims to impart information clearly 
and impartially, to explain the new, and to make lucid the 
obscure. To be effective it must have interesting information 
to give. 

The entertainment speech is what its name implies, although 
there are very few speeches on record that have been given 
exclusively for entertainment. So-called after-dinner speeches, 
of the better type, have as a rule a fairly definite message, or 
some thought-provoking suggestion to offer. We have plenty 
of good models to serve as guides. 


EXERCISES 

i. Read Huxley’s lecture “On a Piece of Chalk,” and report on it 
in writing. Do you find some traces of argument in it? Would 
you classify it as an argumentative speech? Comment on style, 
clearness of thought, forms of support, use of illustrations. (Aim 
to read other speeches assigned also and criticize them orally in 
class.) 


KINDS OF SPEECHES 


217 

2. Report to the class on a sermon or some other speech that )^ou 

heard recently, answering the following questions: 

a. What was the definite aim of the speaker? 

b. By what means did he accomplish this aim? Briefly restate the 
ideas which supported or achieved his purpose. 

c. Do you think he achieved his purpose? Answer this by 
analyzing the effect the sermon had on you — also by getting 
the reactions of others in the congregation. 

3. Analyze some instructor’s lecture as follows: 

a. What other purposes besides that of giving information did he 
have? 

b. What materials did he use for these purposes? 

4. Prepare a ten-minute speech, giving special attention to the type 

of speech. Let it guide you in choice of materials. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

Informative: “Business — A Profession,” by Louis D. Brandeis 
(Vol. IV). “On a Piece of Chalk,” by Thomas H. Huxley (Vol. 
XIII). 

Impressive: “Social Responsibilities,” by John B. Gough (Vol. XIII). 

Argumentative: “Cooper Union Speech,” by Abraham Lincoln 
(Vol. XI). “Why Men Strike,” by Edward A. Filene (Vol. IV). 

Entertainment: “The Babies,” by Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark 
Twain”) (Vol. I). “The Pilgrim Mothers,” by Joseph H. Choate 
(Vol. I). 

References 

Charles Henry Woolbert: Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 
1927), Chap. XV. 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), Chap. XII. 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chap. II. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. III. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917)) Chap. X. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 

Some of your first speeches will very likely be of the informa¬ 
tive type. Beginning students in speaking generally choose to 
make informative or expository speeches, probably because 
they are accustomed to giving talks of this kind in the class¬ 
room and elsewhere, and are, therefore, led to believe that they 
can do better with this kind than with any other. This may be 
correct, although the informative speech often presents real 
difficulties in point of interesting an audience and of holding 
attention. 

Importance of the Informative Element in Speeches. Most 
good speeches are likely to have in them a large element of 
interesting information. It is, therefore, of some importance to 
know how to deal with it. Very often the best service one can 
render a subject is to riddle it with light. The most persuasive 
approach to a difficult question on which there are divergent 
views may be to make a clear and impartial statement of the 
issues. The process of making a certain belief or view clear 
may be the shortest road to winning acceptance for it. The 
chief distinction, as a matter of fact, between exposition and 
argument may be the use which is made of the materials. A 
scientist may expound the theory of evolution, seeking only 
to make it clear and having no particular interest in its accept¬ 
ance; but the exposition may nevertheless cause acceptance 
and exercise far-reaching influence on the lives of the listeners. 
It may give them a wholly new outlook on life. “The Lost 
Arts/’ by Wendell Phillips, one of the most popular of all 
lyceum lectures, derives its power and charm largely from the 
unique and startling information that it contains. Still, it 
would not be classified as an informative speech, because it 

218 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


219 

has clearly an ulterior aim. Many of the speech materials used 
in this lecture are impressive as well; still, impressiveness is 
not the end. The speech is essentially argumentative, because 
the speaker intends that it shall be, and uses his materials to 
advocate a view that many persons will dispute. All depends 
on the speaker’s purpose. Phillips, it may be said, found it 
difficult to agree with his contemporaries, and as a result almost 
all his speeches are of the argumentative type, whether eulogies, 
lyceum lectures, or even occasional addresses. 

Clearness as an Objective in Speaking. Arthur Edward 
Phillips, in his Effective Speaking , emphasizes clearness as an 
end. Clearness is a quality of style, perhaps, rather than a 
general end, but it is worthy of special emphasis in relation to 
the informative element in speaking. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
himself an accomplished lecturer, affirmed that nothing should 
go into a lecture which five hundred persons cannot grasp im¬ 
mediately. Nothing more effectually kills interest in a speech 
than cloudiness or confusion of thought. If the members of an 
audience cannot listen and comprehend what is being said with 
mental ease and comfort, they are likely not to listen at all. 
The speaker, as a rule, has difficulty in realizing that he, pre¬ 
sumably, has a much clearer comprehension or view of the 
subject than his audience, and the fact that things are simple 
and clear to him does not mean that they are simple or clear 
to them. Clear presentation must always be considered from 
the point of view of the listeners. 

It is sometimes difficult to realize the obscurities and am¬ 
biguities that lurk in language. I confess that I used the follow¬ 
ing sentence more than once before I noted its ambiguity: 
“Nothing as raw material for a speech is a failure.” What I 
meant to say, of course, was that a speech cannot be made out 
of nothing, and that raw material of that order is a failure. 
What I did not see was that the sentence might also mean 
“There is nothing in the form of raw material for a speech that 
is a failure” — something I did not mean to say at all. 


220 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


The informative element in a speech is therefore important. 
First, there is likely to be a great deal of it in almost any speech, 
for it may serve all ends. Second, in the presentation of infor¬ 
mation as such, the primary objective is clearness: the audience 
must be made to understand with the least mental effort. 

The Nature of Exposition. In speeches that seek primarily 
to expound or impart information, it is well to bear in mind 
that the response desired from the audience is: “I understand” 
or “Your explanation is clear to me.” The question now arises: 
What is the best and surest way of accomplishing this aim? 
How do we impart new information, new ideas, build up the 
image of a new object? What is the basis of understanding 
and agreement ultimately between speaker and audience? The 
answer is to be found in our experience. That is the ultimate 
common ground where we can meet. 

The only way in which we can learn anything new through 
speech is by its being likened to something that we already 
know; that is, by its being expressed in terms of experiences 
that are familiar to us. We can have new experiences, of 
course; we can go to Africa or Australia and see strange ani¬ 
mals and new landscapes that we have never seen before. But 
if we are going to make some one else see them by telling about 
them, we must describe them by likening them to other animals 
or scenes that are familiar. No matter how strong or creative 
our imagination may be, we cannot imagine anything that is 
not an element of past experience. Try it and be convinced. 
We can imagine an animal with the head of a horse, the body 
of an ox, and the tail of a lion, but while the animal is new, the 
parts are all old and familiar. 

One method of exposition is by means of definition. Take 
the function of a dictionary, for example. What is it? It is 
to define words we do not understand in terms of words we do 
understand. If we do not know the meaning of the word 
caoutchouc , the only way we can be made to understand it is in 
terms of words we already understand. When the dictionary 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


221 


defines caoutchouc as a kind of rubber, we know in a general 
way what it is. Incidentally, if we do not know how to pro¬ 
nounce it, the only way we can learn it is in terms of letter 
sounds that are familiar. If, for the purpose, we spell it kod- 
chook , we probably understand how it is pronounced. 

Another method of exposition is by means of the example. 
A single example may sometimes flood a whole question with 
light, especially if it is a fair specimen and typical of a whole 
class. William Lyon Phelps in his commencement address to 
the graduation class of New York University, June, 1927, tells 
of an amusing incident to show that accuracy of statement does 
not always spell the truth. Said he: 

We know the history of the great sailing ship that was far away 
in the Indian Ocean. The ship was in a calm and all the men were 
desperate and the mate got drunk for the first and only time in his 
life, and the captain kept the log that week and he wrote in the log, 
“Mate was drunk yesterday,” and when the mate came to he said, 
“Now, captain, you must take off that statement from the log; that 
will ruin me.” The captain said, “It is true. You were drunk yester¬ 
day.” “I was, but I shall not get a berth again when we come to port 
and you must forgive me and take it out.” The captain said, “No, I 
believe in writing the exact truth.” “Very well,” said the mate. 
A week later the mate was keeping the log and he wrote in it, “ Cap¬ 
tain was sober yesterday.” 1 

Sometimes we may find testimony an excellent method of ex¬ 
position. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his speech nominating 
Alfred E. Smith for President on the Democratic ticket, in 
Madison Square Garden, New York, 1924, thus expounded the 
source of public opinion: “It was the illustrious Woodrow 
Wilson, my revered chief and yours, who said, ‘The great voice 
of America does not come from the university. It comes in 
a murmur from the hills and the woods, from the farms, the 
factories and the mills — rolling on and gaining volume until 
it comes to us from the homes of the common people.’” 2 

1 Homer D. Lindgren: Modern Speeches (1930), p. 326. 2 Ibid., p. 137. 


222 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Still another method of exposition is by the use of illustra¬ 
tions. This is a very important method, for it is the method 
employed in likening the unknown to the known. In the early 
days of the automobile, when horses shied at every car they 
met on the highway, a little girl overheard one man ask another: 

“ Isn’t it strange that horses should be afraid of automo¬ 
biles?” 

“Well,” said the little girl, breaking into the conversation, 
“I guess you would be afraid if you saw a pair of pants 
come walking down the street with nobody in them.” 

The child should be given credit for more than ordinary 
“horse sense.” The analogy embodies familiar elements of 
thought. For, while the idea of a pair of trousers walking by 
themselves is a novel one, the process of walking and a pair of 
trousers are familiar objects of thought. The relationship alone 
in which they are placed is new. It may be added that the 
phenomenon suggested would strike terror into the heart of the 
most valiant in broad daylight. 

One more illustration. Lincoln once had occasion to explain 
to a jury of Illinois farmers the meaning of the phrase, “pre¬ 
ponderance of evidence.” A large number of witnesses had 
been examined, all equally credible and all equally positive; 
so it was a question of where the preponderance of evidence 
lay. Lincoln told the jurors they must decide the case according 
to the impressions which the evidence had produced upon their 
minds, and if they felt puzzled at all, he would give them a 
test by which they could bring themselves to a just conclusion. 
“Now,” said he, “if you were going to bet on this case, on 
which side would you be willing to risk a quarter? That side 
on which you would be willing to bet a quarter would be the 
side on which rests the preponderance of Evidence in your 
minds. It is possible that you may not be right, but that is not 
the question. The question is as to where the preponderance 
of evidence lies, and you can judge exactly where it lies in your 
minds by deciding which side you would be willing to bet on.” 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


223 

This illustration flooded the question with light. Here was 
something in their own experience that they could understand. 
That which was not understood was likened to something which 
was perfectly well understood. This is what we may call “hit¬ 
ting the bullVeye” in speaking. Observe that the comparison 
is from the unknown to the known. The mental response 
desired was, “We understand.” 

The principle here explained is the one that underlies all 
good speeches of the informative kind. Always you must move 
from the unknown to the known; from the unfamiliar to the 
familiar. The known and familiar are always to be understood 
in relation to your audience. This applies to the use of all 
speech materials. Your diction must be of a kind your audience 
can easily understand; your sentences so constructed as to be 
easily grasped; your method of presentation, in general, such 
that the information given may be comprehended with clarity 
and ease. 

The Use of Charts and Maps. In presenting involved facts 
and statistics, it is sometimes a great advantage to use charts 
or maps. To show the growth of population, of national in¬ 
come, of increase in taxes, or of any one of a thousand things, 
it is hard to beat a graph with its ascending curves or mount¬ 
ing columns. If one were to show how the Versailles Treaty 
altered the national boundaries of Europe, it would be ex¬ 
tremely difficult to do it without the use of maps. Charts and 
maps are in effect pictures and have all the advantages of the 
“eye appeal.” They are excellent aids to the understanding 
and memory. 

All such devices, however, should be used sparingly in speech 
training. They do not help much to develop ability in speak¬ 
ing; in fact, they may easily retard it. To make good charts 
is the work of scientists and statisticians, rather than that of 
a speaker. To speak from charts is a good deal simpler than 
to speak without them. Such aids are seldom used in public 
addresses except in scientific lectures and in technical subjects. 


224 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


In some instances, as in certain intercollegiate debates, they 
have been forbidden on account of the tendency to abuse them. 1 
In the early debates, charts cluttered the stage and were strung 
up on wires stretched over the platform, until the debates gave 
the appearance of a competition in chart-making. The audience 
kept looking at the charts rather than listening to the debaters. 
The result was that all such devices were ruled out by the 
constitution of the league. 

Judicious use, however, of such devices on occasion may be 
proper. The tendency to abuse them or to make too much of 
them should be avoided. It is a good rule to use them only 
when adequate results cannot be had in any other way. 

Requisites of a Good Informative Speech. A good informa¬ 
tive speech should, to some extent at least, arouse curiosity. 
It should deal with a subject that your audience would really 
want to have explained or know something more about. In¬ 
formative speeches are too often made on subjects that have 
only a mild interest for the audience, or on which the listeners 
are about as well informed as the speaker. Such speeches have, 
therefore, a tendency to degenerate into “an elaboration of the 
obvious.” A girl in class, for example, is on part-time duty in 
a hospital, and undertakes to make a speech on the history and 
work of the institution. Unless that hospital is different from 
other hospitals, and treats cases that are out of the ordinary, 
the chances are good that the listeners are in for a dull speech. 
To be worth while, a speech of this kind should yield information 
that is really new to the audience and that adds to the sum 
total of their knowledge. 

In an expository speech, there is not the same opportunity 
to link the subject up with the vital interests of the audience 
that there is in persuasive speeches. Very often, mental curi¬ 
osity alone must sustain attention. I may be interested in 
understanding something about vacuum radio tubes, or Ein- 

1 Central Debating Circuit, formerly made up of the Universities of 
Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


225 

stein’s theory of relativity; but after all, it is mere curiosity 
that supports attention in such a speech. I should not expect 
to put such information to practical use, or if I entertained 
any such expectation, it would be remote and uncertain. We 
have, therefore, to depend largely on certain factors of inter¬ 
estingness such as the unusual and the concrete. It is largely 
through the new and unusual, expressed in terms of familiar 
experiences, that informatory or expository speeches are made 
interesting. 

Another requisite of a good informative speech is that the 
speaker shall know more about the subject than the listeners. 
Socrates is credited with the saying, “All men are sufficiently 
eloquent in that which they understand.” Unfortunately, the 
obverse is even more true: no man can speak well on a subject 
that he does not understand, or on which he does not have 
more information than his audience. In class speeches students, 
as a rule, will not make the same painstaking effort in preparing 
an informative speech that they will in preparing other types 
of speeches. The temptation is to take something near at hand, 
too often a subject that they know no more about than their 
classmates. The result is a dull speech. A student will, for 
instance, read several magazine articles and perhaps portions 
of a book or two in preparing a speech — not to speak of a 
debate — on the League of Nations or on lobbying. But what 
student will make adequate preparation for a truly interesting 
speech on The Intelligence of Monkeys, The Socratic Method, 
or The Culture of the Eskimos — all excellent subjects for an 
informative speech? 

Examples of Interesting Informative Speeches. As examples 
of interesting informative speeches may be cited lectures on 
the polar regions by noted explorers. When Admiral Byrd 
appeared at the Municipal Auditorium in Minneapolis, the 
estimated attendance at the two lectures given in the afternoon 
and evening of the same day was twenty thousand. No doubt 
there was good publicity both for the lecture and for the polar 


226 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


expedition; but the principal reason for this record-breaking 
attendance must be found in the fact that he had unusual experi¬ 
ences and information to give and pictures of new and unknown 
scenes to exhibit. Few of us have first-hand knowledge of life 
and climate in the polar regions, and mental curiosity here is at 
high pitch. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Arctic explorer and leading 
exponent of life and culture in the frozen North, can hold an 
audience spellbound for two or three hours relating personal 
experiences and discoursing on the life and culture of the Eski¬ 
mos on the North American coast. And for the same reason: 
he deals with unique facts and experiences. The Roald 
Amundsen lecture on the discovery of the South Pole was of 
the same nature. Few of us have the unique experiences and 
information to impart that these bold adventurers in the polar 
regions have, but their lectures suggest the kind of materials 
wanted in an informative speech. They also show how desire, 
especially desire to know — curiosity — may be gratified and 
attention held by this type of address. 

One of the earliest and most popular lectures of Wendell 
Phillips was “Street Life in Europe.” A travel talk describing 
interesting places and persons is likely to hold attention, espe¬ 
cially if the speaker has had opportunities for travel and can 
give first-hand information. If you have studied anthropology, 
astronomy, chemistry, or almost any science, it should yield 
interesting subjects for informative speeches. 

An example of an exceptionally fine speech containing a 
wealth of unusual and interesting information is “The Lost 
Arts,” by Wendell Phillips. This is regarded as the highest 
type of lyceum lecture. While information may not be the 
ultimate end in this speech, it is a very important subordinate 
end. The lecture abounds in concrete information that is 
striking and unique. Read it as an example of informative 
and attention-gripping speech materials. 

Informative Speeches That Expound or Explain. The inform¬ 
ative speeches so far instanced have dealt with unusual facts 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


227 

that are interesting in themselves, and do not present any 
serious problem of interpretation for the ordinary audience. If 
one has the materials, such speeches are not difficult to make. 
They are likely to hold attention well. 

Another class of informative speeches aims to explain new 
processes or new devices, and expound new theories, new pro¬ 
posals, new experiments. These may present a real problem 
in holding attention and connecting up with any vital interest 
on the part of the audience. 

There are, for example, all kinds of mechanical devices and 
processes that are marvels in themselves; but to give a reason¬ 
ably interesting explanation of them is another matter. It 
seems little short of miraculous that, in a city of several million 
people, we may in the course of a very few minutes speak to 
any one of them over the telephone. How are such connections 
made? Simple, when you once understand. But of several 
speeches I have listened to on that subject, not one of them 
really made it clear. Still more marvelous as a mechanical 
invention is the automatic telephone system, and probably too 
complicated to explain in a speech. The fact of the matter is 
that, in addition to the inherent difficulties of explaining these 
processes, we have only a very mild interest in understanding 
them. Many a person drives a car without being able to find 
either the carburetor or the crank case. So unless you have 
more than an ordinary interest in these mechanical devices or 
processes, and more than ordinary skill in presenting them, be 
on your guard against inflicting your explanations on innocent 
listeners. 

As for new theories, experiments, proposals in the realm 
of economics, government, science, and so forth, they may 
be very interesting and furnish good subjects for expository 
speeches. The proposed United States of Europe, The Kellogg 
Pact, The Soviet Experiment, Birth Control, Violet Rays, 
Socializing the Radio, as in England and some European coun¬ 
tries — these subjects should be interesting if intelligently 


228 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


handled. If mere exposition is the aim, it should be made 
impartial, and everything that savors of advocacy should be 
avoided. Even then, exposition of such subjects may have a 
certain persuasive effect. To understand is frequently equiva¬ 
lent to believing. Perhaps we have to admit that any speech 
may indirectly influence conduct. 

Forms of Support. Almost all forms of support may be used 
in the informative speech. Some will predominate. Concrete 
speech materials are the best. The general and specific exam¬ 
ples will be found effective. The lectures of such men as 
Stefansson, Byrd, and Amundsen were replete with personal 
experiences, which as a rule take the form of the specific exam¬ 
ple. To show clearly how an Eskimo family lives and moves 
and has its being, how a penguin behaves, what are the effects 
of very low temperatures in the polar regions, can best be done 
by concrete examples. 

In explaining the new and unfamiliar, in the form of mechan¬ 
ical processes or devices, economic theories and proposals, illus¬ 
trations will be found extremely useful. Several examples have 
been given to show how valuable may be the analogy in making 
clear the meaning of a phrase, or a form of behavior. Illus¬ 
trations derive their effectiveness largely from the fact that 
they embody well-known and familiar experiences. They are 
the chief means of likening the unknown to the known. In 
explaining the meaning of economic or political theories and 
institutions, such as the business cycle or the World Court, the 
use of testimony of authorities in these fields would prove 
effective. 

In Conclusion. The informative element is prominent in all 
types of speeches, unless it be the purely entertaining speech. 
It is, therefore, well worth while to cultivate skill in presenting 
ideas simply and clearly so that the humblest may grasp them. 
In the argumentative speech, especially, the giving of informa¬ 
tion plays a large part. Frequently the only difference between 
exposition and argument is the use made of, or direction given 


THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH 


229 

to, the materials. Exposition becomes argument when it bears 
a certain relation to a definite course of conduct. To present 
information, simply, clearly, vividly, is one of the prime requi¬ 
sites of effective speaking. Nothing so effectually kills atten¬ 
tion as cloudiness and obscurity of thought, and the consequent 
inability of an audience to follow a speaker. We often hear the 
remark that a speaker must say the same thing in several dif¬ 
ferent ways before it is really understood and appreciated. In 
a sense, that is true. First the general statement with some 
restatements; then a specific example or several examples; 
next perhaps testimony in some form; and finally a compari¬ 
son in the form of a good illustration. When people take in 
ideas by the ear, they must take them in diluted form; and, 
paradoxical as it may sound, about the only way we can take 
in information through the ear is by taking it in through the 
eye. That is, we must see things in pictures before we fully 
understand and feel comfortable. Also, we remember things 
largely in terms of pictures. 

As for informative speeches for class practice, one problem is 
to find suitable subjects. A few are suggested in Chapter III, 
“Choosing a Subject.” Aim to avoid the trite and common¬ 
place. Look for the unusual or the unique. With something 
out of the ordinary to offer, you can have your audience all at¬ 
tention. Make free use of concrete speech materials, and es¬ 
pecially of illustrations to tide over difficult places. 

EXERCISES 

1. Report in writing on one of the speeches assigned for reading. 
Comment on it as a type. Is the informative element predomi¬ 
nant? Is it clear? What forms of support are used? Which ones 
are most effective? Do you find the pictorial element strong? 
Comment on the style and such other points as occur to you. 

2. In a three-minute speech, aim to make clear the meaning of the 
following. Be concrete and simple. 

a. To equal a predecessor, a man must be twice his worth. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


230 

b. We learn from history that we never learn anything from his¬ 
tory. 

c. He who has less than he desires should know that he has more 
than he deserves. 

d. You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. 

e. Riches are the baggage of virtue. 

3. Read Watterson’s description of Lincoln (page 484). Comment 
on it as to diction and other qualities of style. Does it present a 
clear picture of Lincoln? 

4. Give a report, oral or written, on a speech you have recently heard, 
which aimed primarily to make something clear or impart in¬ 
formation. 

5. Plan three speech situations, choosing subject and audience, for an 
informative speech. 

6. Prepare an informative speech of eight or ten minutes on some 
interesting subject. Aim to get away from the trite and common¬ 
place. Try to enlist as many factors of interestingness as possible. 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Modern Education and the Government,” by Franklin D. Roose¬ 
velt ( O’Neill and Riley). 

“The Poetic Principle,” by Edgar Allan Poe {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 
“Man and Monkeys,” by Louis Agassiz {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 
“Aphorisms,” by John Morley {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 

“The Choice of Books,” by Frederick Harrison (Vol. VII). 

“How to Fail in Literature,” by Andrew Lang (Vol. VI). 

“The Future of the Supreme Court,” by James M. Beck {Lindgren). 

References 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XII. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chap. XI. 
Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chaps. X-VIII. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 

All great thoughts come from the heart. — Marquis de Vauvenargues 

We have dealt briefly with the informative speech. We have 
now to consider the impressive speech. Both impressive and 
argumentative speeches as a rule are persuasive; that is, they 
aim to influence human behavior. The distinctive aspect of 
persuasive speaking is that it appeals to feelings and emotions 
or motives as well as to the intellect. In informative speeches, 
the appeal is primarily to the understanding or intellect. 

We have already seen that the type of speech we are here 
dealing with is concerned with the support of propositions that 
are not disputed; or, to put it differently, with beliefs that are 
accepted, but which do not function adequately in behavior. 
We are all agreed, for example, that selfishness is an ugly trait, 
and we need not be convinced on that score. Still, hundreds 
of sermons have been preached on it, and hundreds more doubt¬ 
less will continue to be preached. There are plenty of occasions 
for making speeches that aim to strengthen old loyalties, revive 
flabby faiths, bolster up old convictions, mobilize moral im¬ 
pulses, put a new edge on conscience, and hold up character 
traits that are altogether lovely and admirable. The problem 
of the impressive speech is essentially one of motivation. 

Feelings, Emotions, Motives. In this chapter we shall have 
occasion to use freely such terms as feelings , emotions , motives. 
We often refer to emotional appeal. We should understand 
what these terms mean. 

Psychologists refer to feelings in three dimensions; namely, 
pleasantness — unpleasantness, expectancy — release, excite- 

231 


232 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

ment — numbness. 1 We are concerned primarily with feelings 
in their aspect of being pleasant or unpleasant, for all of us are 
motivated by a desire to have pleasant experiences and to 
avoid unpleasant ones. It is difficult to see, moreover, how 
expectancy and excitement, or their opposites, can escape hav¬ 
ing a pleasant or unpleasant feeling tone. We may therefore 
say, roughly, that all feelings, so far as they motivate action, 
range themselves under these two heads, pleasant and unpleas¬ 
ant. By referring to our own experiences, we have a fairly clear 
idea of what that means. 

An emotion is essentially an intensified feeling, and may be 
either pleasant or unpleasant. Familiar pleasant emotions are 
mirth, joy, love; unpleasant ones, grief, fear, anger, hate. An 
emotion “is a stirred up state of feeling. . . . Each emotion 
can be located in the tridimensional scheme of feeling, but such 
an analysis does not do full justice to the emotion. Fear is a 
state of excited, unpleasant expectancy, and mirth is excited 
pleasant relief, but each is something more. Emotion is like 
feeling in being diffuse and massive, but an emotion has more 
definiteness than a mere feeling, especially on the motor side. 
Each emotion is a sensation mass, and each is at the same time 
a motor set. Fear is a set for escape and anger for attack. 
These sets are more specific than the sets of mere pleasantness 
and unpleasantness.” 2 We shall not go far astray in regarding 
emotion as deep, intense feeling. 

A motive is a feeling or emotion that prompts or incites to 
action. Not all emotions are necessarily motives in the sense 
of influencing conduct, although they may become so. A mother 
grieves over the loss of an only son. The grief may not mo¬ 
tivate to any definite action. Again, it may. Suppose it is a 
wealthy woman. She might, by way of compensation for her 
grief, donate a memorial library to her community or an educa¬ 
tional institution. A motive is always a determinant of behavior. 

1 Robert S. Woodworth: Psychology (1929), p. 282. 

2 Ibid., p. 287. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


233 


Relation of Our Wants and Wishes to Our Emotions. There 
has been much confused thinking in regard to the relation¬ 
ship between our emotions and our wants or motives. It 
should be made plain that our feelings and emotions are as in¬ 
separably connected with our wants and desires as wind is 
inseparably connected with air. In fact, it may be said that 
just as wind is simply air in motion, so our feelings or emotions 
are simply our wants and wishes in action. To want something 
is to experience a feeling or emotion concerning it. If our wants 
are making progress in the direction of being satisfied, we ex¬ 
perience pleasurable emotions. If our wants are not making 
progress in finding satisfaction or are in the process of being 
defeated or frustrated, we experience unpleasant emotions. If 
we are hungry and cannot get food, suffocating and cannot get 
air, lonely and cannot find friends, we have painful or unpleasant 
feelings or emotions. If we are looking forward to attending a 
fine concert, a play, or a football game, we have pleasurable 
feelings or emotions. The satisfaction of a want may be sudden 
and of short duration, as when we unexpectedly run across a 
friend; or it may be of long duration, as in the case of a com¬ 
poser writing a symphony, or it may have a long period of antici¬ 
pation, as when we plan a trip abroad six months in advance. 

Satisfaction is not limited to the actual appeasement of the impulse 
through action upon its object; it is no mere running down of a drive; 
for it contains, in addition, an anticipation of appeasement, an 
imaginative foretaste of the attainment of the goal. This is even true 
of the most primitive satisfactions of man. The satisfaction of hunger 
is not the simple appeasement of an organic craving, but a realization 
in imagination of the pleasures of dining, which may accompany the 
whole process of eating. Anticipation thus provides an ideal com¬ 
ponent in all satisfaction. — The appeasement of impulse in action is 
the focus, as it were, of the satisfaction; but around it lies like a 
penumbra the anticipation of appeasement. Sometimes one, some¬ 
times another of these factors in satisfaction predominates. 1 

1 DeWitt Henry Parker: Human Values (1931), p. 24. 


234 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


In Chapter IX, “Motivation: Want Appeal,” it was made 
plain that negative motives like fear, anger, jealousy, hate, are 
emotions that have been developed in the competitive struggle 
as a result of interference with our quest of satisfying human 
wants. Pleasant emotions, on the other hand, are always the 
result of wants satisfied or desires fulfilled. An emotion is 
therefore always symptomatic of a human want in the process of 
being either satisfied or frustrated. 

Emotional appeal is always want appeal. It is plain from 
what has been said that emotional appeal in speaking has to 
do in some way with the satisfaction of human wants and 
desires. Every emotion that we can experience is grounded in 
desire of some sort. When Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his speech 
of acceptance of the Democratic nomination for the Presidency 
in 1932, appealed to the fear of radicalism, he knew that, with 
a large group of Americans, the spread of radicalism means 
threatened interference with the desire for free opportunity to 
carve out careers for themselves through unhampered indul¬ 
gence of the profit-making motive. The appeal to ethical senti¬ 
ments — rather frequent in persuasive speaking — is based on 
the desire of all normal persons to see fair dealing and justice 
prevail. The fact is that we are made to feel uncomfortable 
when human misery and suffering are brought imaginatively 
to our attention, and we find satisfaction in a course of conduct 
which will allay the suffering of others. So also with every 
other form of emotional appeal, whether the emotion sought to 
be aroused is pleasant or unpleasant; its basis is always some 
form of desire, in the process either of fulfillment or of defeat. 

The Value of Emotional Appeal. Why, then, do we aim to 
arouse people’s feelings and emotions on subjects that we dis¬ 
cuss? The answer is plainly that our feelings and emotions are 
symptomatic of human wants and are the mainsprings of action. 
“The chief motives of human actions lie in the feelings and 
emotions,” says an eminent psychologist. “There is no light 
in souls in which there is no warmth” is a French aphorism. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


235 

Walter Dill Scott affirms: “An understanding of the emotions 
is of primal importance to every public speaker, for his success 
or failure depends more on his ability to stir the emotions than 
upon his ability to instruct the intellect or move the will.” 1 

“No movement gets far on a purely intellectual basis,” says 
John Dewey. 2 “It has to be emotionalized; it must appeal to 
the social imagination. Man is so constituted that every great 
movement in history has owed its force to the stirring of emo¬ 
tions.” This is equivalent to saying that all great movements 
must be linked up with fundamental human wants. A man’s 
eloquence is measured largely by his ability to stir the emotions. 
He who cannot touch the heart will never be a successful speaker. 

The manner in which we give beliefs a richer meaning and so 
make them more potent for a better-ordered behavior is by 
linking them up with human wants or by charging them with 
feeling, just as a wire is charged with a current of electricity. 
The difference between a dynamic belief and a dormant one 
is the difference between a live wire and a dead one. We do 
the things we feel deeply about and leave undone the things 
that we do not feel or care about. All stimulation of the feel¬ 
ings, all emotional appeal, must be interpreted to have value 
only insofar as it revives dormant beliefs, strengthens and vivi¬ 
fies weak and wavering ones, and renders strong ones still 
more potent and dynamic. It is not enough that a eulogy of 
George Washington, for example, shall make us feel deeply in 
regard to that gentleman. It must hold up for our emulation 
definite personality traits, inspire us by definite acts of heroism 
or statesmanship, and so give a richer and more dynamic mean¬ 
ing to certain definite beliefs that we hold concerning the Great 
Virginian. 

Our feelings or desires are the basis of human values. Many 
persons seem to think that there is something tricky and ignoble 
in an emotional appeal. If that is really so, we had better 

1 Psychology of Public Speaking (1926), p. 50. 

2 New Republic, April 8, 1931, p. 203. 


236 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

keep a watchful eye on our poets, for their appeal is primarily 
to the feelings and emotions. It is not the function of a poet 
to give facts or impart scientific information impartially. 
Great poetry, like great oratory, is pictorial and, by means of 
presenting vivid imagery of power and beauty to the senses, 
stirs in us appropriate feelings and emotions, inspiring us to 
love what is beautiful and righteous, and to hate what is ugly 
and base. 

It is our feelings and emotions that make life interesting and 
determine all its values. The goal of all living is to get as many 
pleasurable feelings and emotions as possible, and to avoid the 
unpleasant ones. (This may include the next world.) Our 
reason serves to evaluate human behavior and to help us to 
choose. The best our intellect can do is to guide us into pleas¬ 
urable feelings and away from disagreeable ones. But always 
the choice is made on the basis of desire, of wants. 

Our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend 
on the feelings [which] the things arouse in us. Where we judge a 
thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it, this is 
only because the idea is itself associated with a feeling. If we were 
radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only thing our mind could 
entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be 
unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable 
or significant than any other. 1 

We even speak of intellectual emotions; for example, satis¬ 
factions derived from great accomplishments in literature, art, 
invention, administration — further proof that all our experi¬ 
ences, even intellectual, have a feeling or emotional tone. Our 
feelings and emotions are the colors in life’s picture. Without 
them, life would be drab indeed. 

Understanding is not enough. We often hear that what is 
needed to inculcate the right behavior is understanding and a 
knowledge of the facts. That is important. It was a part of the 
1 William James: Talks to Teachers (1915), p. 229. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


237 

Socratic gospel that truly virtuous conduct rests on understand¬ 
ing. But is understanding enough? Remember that impressive 
speeches deal with propositions that are not disputed. Our 
reason tells us that such propositions are true or valid. Should 
a citizen in a republic vote? Our reason says yes. Do we there¬ 
fore always vote? Should we behave in a selfish way toward 
our associates? Our reason says no. Do we therefore always 
behave or act unselfishly? Our reason tells us we should take 
outdoor exercises regularly, eat slowly, select our food on the 
basis of its nourishing quality, and do or not do a thousand 
other things. Do we follow reason in these matters? No. The 
spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak. We do not live up 
to our aspirations. It is precisely with this problem of making 
our action patterns conform to our beliefs and ideals that a 
quarter of a million pulpits are occupied every Sunday morning. 

Appeal to interests or motives is necessary. If, then, reason is 
powerless to motivate human beings in regard to the most 
vital truths of life, or plays at best a minor role, is it not poor 
psychology to depend too much on it in influencing audiences? 
Must not the speaker of necessity appeal to such mental proc¬ 
esses as in reality impel men to action? If it is a fact that we 
are governed largely by our wishes, wants, desires, prejudices, 
customs, habits, feelings, emotions, then obviously the speaker 
must address himself to these. He must bring his message, or 
the course of action which he advocates, into line with the 
listeners’ wants, wishes, desires, customs, habits, because, in 
general, we do not like to adopt the new unless it is made to 
look much like the old and familiar. “I have only one lamp 
by which my feet are guided,” said Patrick Henry, “and that 
is the lamp of experience.” It is only in our experiences that 
we meet on common ground. 

Steps in Preparing an Impressive Speech. Having said this 
much in justification of our methods, we are now prepared to 
take up the more important steps in the preparation of speeches 
of this type. 


238 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

i. Analyze your audience for motives. This holds good for all 
persuasive speeches, impressive and argumentative as well. It 
is not always easy to see and appreciate what motives may be 
appealed to in any particular audience. It is well to look for 
two kinds of motives: those that are common to all people, 
and those that are peculiar to the audience in question. Pro¬ 
fessional men and laborers have many interests in common, but 
each class as well has certain interests peculiar to the group. 
As a rule, there are many more of the first order than of the 
second, depending somewhat on the subject. If you are talking 
about a citizen’s obligation to take an active interest in public 
affairs, the motives you will appeal to are largely those common 
to all people, for we all have much the same stake in government. 
The motives that could be appealed to have an extremely wide 
range. Suppose you are addressing an audience of college stu¬ 
dents on this subject. Consider the possibilities of appeal to 
the following motives: 

a. Self-preservation: Playing Safe. Does not safety lie in the direction 
of an intelligent interest in public questions? Consider what the 
World War did to us, and will continue to do to us for the next 
half-century or so. Is it probable that we can prevent wars until 
we develop an intelligent and socially-minded citizenship in the 
leading nations of the world? 

b. Property. We have an interest in avoiding corruption in govern¬ 
ment — that running sore of democracy — whether local, national, 
or international. Corruption and misgovernment may be costly. 
The estimated cost of the World War was 350 billion dollars. We 
pay a costly toll annually for bad government. 

C. Reputation. We wish to be known as good citizens, as persons with 
enough intelligence to do our part in getting good government. 
Any other attitude is cynical. 

d. Affections. The interests of family and friends are involved in an 
efficient and stable government. The ramifications of bad govern¬ 
ment are endless. Consider the effects of the Russian Revolution 
on the middle classes in Russia. 

e. Moral Sentiments. Intelligence and education are trusts with 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


239 

which to serve society. The scholar who does not recognize such 
obligations is recreant to his trust. (See “The Scholar in a Re¬ 
public,” by Wendell Phillips.) 

/. JEsthetic Tastes. What is the relation of an efficient government to 
the development and enjoyment of the highest culture and art — 
great music, drama, oratory, painting? There may be a very 
definite one. What would a revolution do to art? Revolutions 
come from lack of intelligent interest in government. 

This is merely suggestive. It is intended to serve primarily 
to stress the importance of centering attention on the audience 
and motives. In preparing a speech, always keep one eye on 
the audience. Try to discover their interests in your question, 
not in a vague and nebulous way, but in a specific and concrete 
way. Your subject must touch your audience at some point 
vitally, or else it is not a good subject for that particular 
audience. 

As an example of what may happen under a government that 
suppresses public discussion and in which the electorate has no 
voice, consider the following contrast drawn between democracy 
in America and despotism in Russia under the Czarist regime. 1 

I know what reform needs, and all it needs, in a land where dis¬ 
cussion is free, the press untrammelled, and where public halls protect 
debate. There, as Emerson says, “What the tender and poetic youth 
dreams today, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is tomorrow 
the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the 
charter of nations.” Lieber said, in 1870, “ Bismarck proclaims today 
in the Diet the very principles for which we were hunted and exiled 
fifty years ago.” Submit to risk your daily bread, expect social 
ostracism, count on a mob now and then, “be in earnest, don’t equivo¬ 
cate, don’t excuse, don’t retreat a single inch,” and you will finally 
be heard. 

In such a land he is doubly and trebly guilty who, except in some 
most extreme case, disturbs the sober rule of law and order. 

But such is not Russia. In Russia there is no press, no debate, no 

1 Wendell Phillips: “The Scholar in a Republic.” 


240 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


explanation of what government does, no remonstrance allowed, no 
agitation of public issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the 
summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described 
as “a despotism tempered by assassination.” Meanwhile, such 
despotism has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled 
power doubtless made some of the twelve Caesars insane, — a mad¬ 
man sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred millions of men. 
The young girl whispers in her mother’s ear, under a ceiled roof, her 
pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into exile for his 
opinions. The next week she is stripped naked and flogged to death 
in the public square. No inquiry, no explanation, no trial, no protest; 
one dead uniform silence, — the law of the tyrant. Where is there 
ground for any hope of peaceful change? Where the fulcrum upon 
which you can plant any possible lever? 

This is a powerful emotional (want) appeal intended to 
rouse sympathy for the Russians struggling for liberty. Of the 
scholar’s place in a democracy, Wendell Phillips says elsewhere 
in the same speech: 

Let us inaugurate a new departure, recognize that we are afloat 
on the current of Niagara, eternal vigilance the condition of our safety, 
that we are irrevocably pledged to the world not to go back to bolts 
and bars, — could not if we would, and would not if we could. Never 
again be ours the fastidious scholarship that shrinks from rude contact 
with the masses. Very pleasant it is to sit high up in the world’s 
theatre and criticize the ungraceful struggles of the gladiators, shrug 
one’s shoulders at the actors’ harsh cries, and let every one know that 
but for “this villainous saltpetre you would yourself have been a 
soldier.” But Bacon says, “In the theatre of man’s life, God and his 
angels only should be lookers-on.” “Sin is not taken out of man as 
Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.” “Very beautiful,” 
says Richter, “is the eagle when he floats with outstretched wings aloft 
in the clear blue; but sublime when he plunges down through the 
tempest to his eyry on the cliff, where his unfledged young ones dwell 
and are starving.” Accept proudly the analysis of Fisher Ames: “A 
monarchy is a man-of-war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless when 
under full sail; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


241 

republic is a raft hard to steer, and your feet always wet; but nothing 
can sink her.” If the Alps, piled in cold and silence, be the emblem of 
despotism, we joyfully take the ever-restless ocean for ours, — only 
pure because never still. 

2. Formulate the purpose and main divisions of your speech 
to permit of the greatest want appeal. This can be done only 
after a careful survey of the question, and a careful analysis of 
your audience for their interest in it. Too often important 
propositions in a speech are selected and formulated without 
any reference to audience interest. That tends to make an aim¬ 
less and a dull speech, one that does not grip your hearers. You 
begin to grip your audience only when you begin to show them 
that their interests are involved. 

Suppose we use as an example the subject of taking an inter¬ 
est in public affairs. The plan of such a speech might be some¬ 
what as follows: 

Main Idea I. The privilege of citizenship in a democracy was 
acquired only after a long and bitter struggle. 
Main Idea II. Good government, with all its advantages, can be 
had only by an interested citizenship. 

Main Idea III. You can discharge your obligation as scholars only 
by taking an active interest in public affairs. 

This plan is only a suggestion, and perhaps you can find a 
better one. You will find, however, that the main ideas of the 
speech are vital propositions and lend themselves to want 
appeal. If you will read Phillips’ “The Scholar in a Republic,” 
you will readily discover what powerful appeals may be made 
to some of the motives suggested, and how much persuasive 
dynamite there is in this question. Phillips takes a broad view 
of the subject, maintaining with matchless eloquence that edu¬ 
cated men must not only vote, but assume a leadership in the 
agitation and discussion of public questions. 

Specific Methods of Emotional or Want Appeal. Let us now 
consider specific methods of emotional appeal, remembering 


242 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

that an emotional appeal is always an appeal to motives. There 
are at least two ways of appealing to the feelings. 

i. Give such facts and incidents as have a direct hearing upon 
the feelings to he aroused. Hear what a veteran in the field, 
Henry Ward Beecher, has to say on this subject: 

You can never make people feel by scolding them because they do 
not feel. You can never move anybody by saying “Feel.” Feeling is 
just as much a product of cause as anything else in the world. I 
could sit down before the piano and say, “A, come forth”; and it 
won’t. But if I put my finger on the key it will, and that is the only 
way to make it. The human soul is like a harp; one has but to put 
his hand to a chord and it will vibrate to his touch, accordingly as he 
knows how. It is the knowing how that you are to acquire. It is the 
very business that you are going out into the world for; it is to under¬ 
stand human nature so that you can touch the chords of feeling. 

In general, feeling results from the presentation of some fact or 
truth that has a relation to the particular feeling you wish to produce. 
If I wanted to make you weep, I would not tell you an amusing story; 
I would if I wanted to make you laugh and that story had a relation 
to laughing. If I wished to make you weep, I would tell you some pa¬ 
thetic incident, the truth embodied in which had some sympathetic 
relation to feeling. 1 

If you wish to rouse your hearers to righteous indignation, 
you must present such facts as will produce that emotion; if 
to admiration, then such facts as will awaken that feeling; if 
to loathing, the appropriate ideas must be presented; and so 
on through the whole gamut of the emotions. The ideas intro¬ 
duced must have the proper emotional association. 

Suppose we have occasion to make an appeal for a Red Cross 
drive during a period of depression. We can say: “People are 
in need. They need clothes to wear and food to eat. It is your 
duty to contribute out of your means and help.” This line of 
talk has a certain effect and would doubtless get some response. 
1 he appeal to duty has considerable weight with many persons, 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. Pilgrim Press: Second Series, p. 95. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


243 

but still it seldom puts much currency on the plate or signatures 
on large pledges. 

Suppose now we give a concrete example of what happens 
to many families during panics or hard times, and relate the 
following incident. 

A school nurse in a graded school in a large city noticed one morning 
that one of the girl pupils looked pale and wan. She questioned her. 

“Are you sick?” 

“No,” replied the little girl. 

“Do you feel hungry?” 

“Yes.” 

“Didn’t you have breakfast this morning?” 

“No. It was not my turn.” 

The value of an incident like this is that it is highly sug¬ 
gestive. Psychologically speaking, it sets off a feeling pattern 
with which we are all familiar; namely, that of hunger. We 
may not have been placed in the same position economically 
as this schoolgirl, but most people know from experience some¬ 
thing about the pangs of hunger and can imagine themselves in 
the predicament of this girl. We read into an example like this 
not only the condition of this one family, but that of many 
others similarly placed. The incident gives us a point of con¬ 
tact with reality. 

We should not overlook the fact that a speaker deals with 
reality. When he advocates a course of action which seeks to 
remove certain conditions inimical to social welfare, such as 
child labor, distress in economic crises, intolerance, excessive 
drinking, his aim is unmistakably to bring such conditions 
clearly and imaginatively to the minds of his listeners, to make 
them see things as they actually are in terms of human experi¬ 
ences. We are moved to emotion only by images that can be 
brought vividly to our senses. And we are likely to act on such 
matters as we feel deeply about. 

To make people appreciate a situation, the ideal way is to 
have them see it, and so present to their senses the concrete 


244 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


elements. If all people could actually see before their eyes all 
the things that happen during a modern battle, or if they could 
have vivid pictures of them brought to their senses, probably 
no war would last thirty days. If all the automobile accidents 
that happen in a year, with their accompanying sufferings, 
could be flashed before our eyes, we would drive more carefully. 
The difficulty is with the limitations of our imagination. Juries 
are sometimes taken to the place where the cause of action 
arose, so that they can see with their own eyes just how things 
happened, and be the more properly impressed. But this is 
not practicable for an audience. So we have to resort to pre¬ 
senting to the imagination as vividly as possible such pictures 
as are most representative of the situation we wish to portray, 
and most suggestive. This requires careful selection of facts 
and incidents. The trouble with broad generalities is that they 
are only nebulous adumbrations of reality. They are too much 
up in the clouds. They do not get down to earth, and into con¬ 
crete human experiences. Observe how powerful would be the 
motivation in the imaginative appeals suggested, which in 
both instances cited would be highly emotional. Some of the 
strongest impelling motives of action would be involved: self- 
preservation or playing safe; affections, danger to one’s family 
and friends; moral sentiments, the injustice of endangering 
the lives of others. 

The difference between a good lawyer and a poor one, or a 
good life-insurance salesman and a poor one, is not so much in 
their relative ability to sift testimony, analyze evidence, or 
indulge in long and learned reasoning processes, important as 
that may be, as it is in their ability to draw pictures and make 
tactful, imaginative appeals to the feelings at the right moment. 
One of the most striking bits of persuasion for the value of life 
insurance I ever saw was a letter written by a father to his 
daughter — a piece of literary art, by the way — to be opened 
only upon the death of the father. The letter contained a 
touching message to the daughter and enclosed was a $10,000 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


245 

life-insurance policy! The letter moved one almost to tears 
and made one feel that if one wanted to do something handsome 
for one’s children, that was the way to do it. Great criminal 
lawyers are known not so much for their ability to analyze 
evidence as for their ability to make jurors suggestible and 
move them to tears by appropriate emotional appeals. 

The following from Webster’s “Reply to Hayne” is an illus¬ 
tration in point, and a very good one. In defending the course 
of Massachusetts and New England, Webster did not deem it 
necessary to introduce any evidence on the subject. He was 
aware that his audience knew well the proud part that Massa¬ 
chusetts had played in shaping national policies, and he under¬ 
stood what keys to strike to touch the chords of sympathy and 
admiration in his hearers. 

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. 
She needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for yourselves. 
There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past at least 
is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker 
Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons falling 
in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil 
of every state from New England to Georgia; and there they will 
lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, 
and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in 
the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord 
and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition 
shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under 
salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that 
Union by which alone its existence is made sure; it will stand, in the 
end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will 
stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over 
the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, 
amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very 
spot of its origin. 

Here again is a good example of strong motivation in an emo¬ 
tional appeal. The appeal is not only to New England pride 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


246 

for the large and honorable part played by Massachusetts in 
early American history, but also to patriotism and the safety 
of the Union, which Webster held up as the fountain head of 
liberty and prosperity. 

2. Feeling may be aroused with reference to one idea by likening 
it to another idea that has the right emotional association. This is 
the method of suggestion, which involves a transference of 
feeling from one thought pattern to another. It is a striking 
fact that one idea, emotionally colorless, may become suffused 
with feeling by merely likening it to another idea about which 
we are accustomed to think with a certain emotion. Suppose, 
for instance, an instructor wishes to make his students feel 
that aspirants for honors in debate and oratory owe it to them¬ 
selves as well as to their Alma Mater to make the most careful 
preparation, through class instruction, practice in literary soci¬ 
eties, and reading of good oratorical literature. A mere state¬ 
ment of the proposition makes no impression. He may, how¬ 
ever, liken the art of speaking to the art of music, and dwell 
upon the long-continued and painstaking drill which a musical 
student must undergo before he masters his art. He may sug¬ 
gest that just as the student in music who is not willing to give 
the proper amount of time and effort to his art never rises 
above the ragtime variety, so the student in speaking who is 
too lazy or indolent to give his subject his best efforts never 
gets beyond the ragtime variety of speaking. 

In the agitation against child labor, the following stanzas 
have been given wide circulation: 

No fledgling feeds the father bird! 

No chicken feeds the hen! 

No kitten mouses for the cat —- 
This glory is for men. 

We are the wisest, strongest race — < 

Loud may our praise be sung! ] 

The only animal alive a 

That lives upon its young. f 





THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


247 

There is no argument in this, and no one pretends there is, 
in the sense of evidential support. But there is an impressive 
comparison, or rather contrast, made between the customs of 
the lower animals and man, much to the disadvantage of man. 
We may not be moved by the idea that children labor in fac¬ 
tories, but we are deeply moved by the idea that such labor is, 
in effect, adults feeding on the substance of these wretched 
children. In this way the idea of child labor is invested with 
a feeling of horror; in other words, the idea of child labor, 
which may not have any emotional coloring to begin with, 
becomes suffused with feeling when likened to the idea of adults 
feeding on the substance of their children. The comparison is 
from the unfelt to the felt. The appeal is to the moral senti¬ 
ments. The feeling aroused is one of strong repulsion which 
may become a powerful motive. 

In this respect, ideas are like metals. A metal heated to 
high temperature will, when brought in contact with another 
of lower temperature, transfer heat to the latter. So an idea 
highly colored with emotion will, when associated with another 
idea that is emotionally cold or colorless, give to the latter its 
feeling tone. This is what William James called the sympathetic 
induction of feeling. 

A comparison must he accepted to he effective. In order to get 
results in this way, the audience must accept the comparison as 
valid. If there is doubt in their minds about the fairness of 
the comparison, or about the truth of the idea presented, you 
will get no results. If there is doubt in the minds of your 
listeners, for instance, that child labor is an evil, and if they are 
inclined to look upon it as a good, or at least as a necessary evil, 
then no amount of invidious comparisons will have any effect. 
That is why illustrations of this kind are effective in impressive 
speeches, where we usually deal with propositions not disputed. 
In argumentative speeches, dealing with disputed propositions, 
acceptance must sometimes first be won by evidence and au¬ 
thorities. When that is done, emotional appeal is frequently 




THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


248 

in order. This applies not only to the speech as a whole, but 
also to subordinate propositions. 

Examples of emotional appeal through comparisons are innu¬ 
merable, and abound in almost all speeches of this type that 
possess merit. 

At the International Convention of Methodist Episcopal 
Churches held in Minneapolis in the summer of 1912, the ques¬ 
tion of the retirement of bishops came up for consideration. 
After a bitter debate lasting several days, the convention finally 
voted to retire three or four bishops. One of these, facing the 
men who had voted to retire him, uttered these memorable 
words: 

It is better to have your head off and rolling in the basket than 
to live for ten days and look upward at the keen edge of the guillotine, 
as I have done. I urge you to adopt some system like that suggested 
by the Dean of the Yale Law School for the automatic retirement of 
bishops. It would save you from the possibility of political tempta¬ 
tion and us that of anguish and humility. You have done what you 
thought was your duty and I am submissive to your will. You have 
discovered that I am not effective. I have not discovered it, but your 
judgment is better than mine, and this is not to be the finish. I shall 
still be permitted to show you how far the Gulf Stream of my youth 
can extend into the Arctic Ocean of old age. 

The quotation is given at some length to show the spirit of 
it, as well as the dignity and self-control with which it was given. 
It is, however, the illustration at the beginning that claims 
attention. That simple comparison brings out more vividly 
and forcefully the feelings of the speaker than would several 
pages of discussion. We may not have seen a guillotine, but 
we have read about it. The French Revolution established it 
as one of the most gruesome forms of execution; so that while 
our knowledge of it is an indirect experience, it is an extremely 
vivid one. Noticeable also is the strikingly effective and 
beautiful comparison (metaphor) in the last sentence. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


249 

Observe the effect of the following from a prize-winning stu¬ 
dent oration on “Modern Feudalism”: 

Ancient feudalism has long been a synonym for oppression. It 
made of men masters and slaves. It robbed the masses of their rights, 
while it concentrated power and wealth in the hands of the few. It 
was founded upon barbarism and tyranny, and enforced at the point 
of the sword. 

That feudalism, however, is dead. The quarrelsome barons, under 
whose despotism Europe once trembled, now live only in song and 
story. Their frowning castles, which once rang with shouts of revelry 
and merriment, and which were long the strongholds of feudal aris¬ 
tocracy and power, now lie in crumbling ruins. But out of the ruins 
of ancient feudalism, modern feudalism arose. The spirit which had 
built castles and conquered continents, now impelled men to amass 
fortunes and master the world’s commerce. Discarding the rusty 
sword for a bag of gold, this new form of feudalism sought on the 
American shores a new home. Its old barons became the modern 
money magnates, the captains of finance, who immediately took 
possession of all our industries. One of these sunk a shaft into the 
plain, and the earth poured forth its wealth in bubbling streams of 
petroleum. Another, an ingenious Scotchman, building a furnace on 
the mountain side, laid the foundation for the modern iron works. 
Some dug into the bowels of the mountains and drew forth untold 
riches of useful and precious metals. Others, entering the field of 
invention, built telegraphs and organized gigantic systems of rail¬ 
roads, and today the wealth of these is over one-seventh of the total 
wealth of the Union. 1 

• The force of the comparison lies in the fact that feudalism 
stands for tyranny and oppression on the one hand, and serfdom 
on the other. The speaker aims to arouse in his hearers the 
same feeling or attitude toward what he calls American indus¬ 
trial feudalism that people ordinarily have toward historical 
feudalism. In the language of suggestion, there is a transfer¬ 
ence of feeling from one thought pattern to the other. It is 

1 Sigurd Peterson, University of Minnesota, Second Prize, Northern 
Oratorical League, 1909. 


250 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


worth noting that the speaker uses this illustration in the intro¬ 
duction to link up his subject at once with a fundamental 
human want (desire for economic freedom) and the corre¬ 
sponding emotion that results from a frustration of that want 
or desire. The excerpt also is an interesting study in style. 
Note the words with strong emotional connotation — quarrel¬ 
some, despotism, crumbled, frowning, crumbling ruins. The pas¬ 
sage has rhythmic charm and power. 

Forms of Support for Impressive Speeches. All forms of 
support may be used in the impressive speech, but certain ones 
will predominate. The best way to find out which ones are 
important is to examine a few models. The aim must always 
be to find materials with the right feeling content. 

i. Facts and Figures. These are not impressive, as a rule, 
unless they are put in such form as to appeal to the imagination. 
To say that the World War cost twenty million lives does not 
make much of an impression; but if in imagination you march 
the ghosts of the dead in solemn procession before a reviewing 
stand and suggest how long it would take for the ghostly column 
to pass a given point, so many deep, the picture may be impres¬ 
sive. Observe that it is the picture you draw — the appeal to 
the eye — that gives the presentation of the facts an emotional 
content. 

The following is impressive as an effort to suggest that eternity 
is a long time. 

Suppose that every flake of snow that ever fell was a figure nine, 
and that the first flake was multiplied by the second, and that product 
by the third, and so on to the last flake. And then suppose that this 
total should be multiplied by every drop of rain that ever fell, calling 
each drop a figure nine; and that total by each blade of grass that ever 
helped to weave a carpet for the earth, calling each blade a figure nine; 
and that again by every grain of sand on every shore, so that the grand 
total would make a line of figures so long that it would require millions 
upon millions of years for light, traveling at the rate of one hundred 
and eighty-five thousand miles per second, to reach the end. And 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


251 

suppose, further, that each unit in this almost infinite total stood for 
billions of ages — still that vast and almost endless time, measured by- 
all the years beyond, is as one flake, one drop, one leaf, one blade, one 
grain, compared with all the flakes, and drops, and leaves, and 
blades, and grains. 

2. The General Example. The general example is a very 
effective form of support for impressive speeches. By means 
of it we may present not specific but general images to the 
senses, and so stir the emotions. The following from Ingersoll, 
which is regarded one of the most eloquent extracts in the 
English language, is built up exclusively with the general exam¬ 
ple. Observe how familiar emotion patterns are touched off 
and with what consummate skill the images are selected for 
emotional effect. While most of the images are visual, there 
are a number of effective auditory images. 

The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great 
struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation — the 
music of boisterous drums — the silver voices of heroic bugles. We 
see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We 
see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in 
those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered 
with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them 
when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part 
with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, 
woody places, with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings 
and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. 
Others are bending over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some 
are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers 
who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and 
say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses — divine mingling of 
agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring 
with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts 
the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the 
door with the babe in her arms — standing in the sunlight sobbing. 
At the turn of the road a hand waves — she answers by holding high 
in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


252 

Refer to the speech of Jane Addams at the end of Chapter 
XVII, “The Occasional Address” (page 302), and observe the 
effect she gets with the general example. The whole speech is 
built up with this form of support almost exclusively. 

In her lecture, “The Battle of Life,” Mary Livermore uses 
general examples to make impressive some maladjustments in 
modern society. 

It [Christianity] is yet to conquer the realm of trade and com¬ 
merce, and to readjust all the relations of man with man, on the basis 
of human brotherhood. It will not then be possible for a million or 
more of men, with hungry wives and children, to beg for work, which 
will be refused them by millionaire employers, living in luxury. We 
shall not read of women and children starving and freezing in the midst 
of our nation’s abundance, nor of daily suicides in our great cities, be¬ 
cause of homelessness, lack of friends, inability to obtain work, and 
utter despair of any change for the better. Our papers will not drop 
as now with the foul accounts of business frauds and betrayal of 
trusts, with reports of defalcations and embezzlements, and the dis¬ 
honesty of trusted officials. Armenians will not be hunted like 
“partridges on the mountains,” and tortured and slaughtered by 
Moslem hate, while all the civilized world stands idly looking on. 
{Applause.) It will then be possible for an inferior race to live 
comfortably amid dominant Anglo-Saxon people, with no danger of 
being enslaved or destroyed by them. 1 

3. The Specific Example. Always it is the specific and con¬ 
crete that arouses the feelings and brings vividly home to us 
the worth of ideas and their vital interest to us. Abstract 
ideas and broad general statements are almost devoid of emo¬ 
tional coloring. So are reasoning processes. To say that the 
United States lost a million men in the Civil War does not 
arouse any strong feelings. To recount the sufferings of a sin¬ 
gle individual soldier in Libby Prison might move us to tears. 

The facts in the following are grim enough, and still they are 
too general to make any strong emotional impression. 

1 Modern Eloquence (First Edition, 1900), Vol. V. 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


253 

Paris, August 28. An officer who returned here wounded after 
participating in the battle of Charleroi, declares that in the three days 
there the Germans lost 60,000 in killed and wounded. ... At many 
places, he says, the piles of dead were so high that they had to be 
moved to permit the guns to retain the range. 

— Minneapolis Journal 

In contrast with this, consider the emotional effect of the 
following: 

Sir, I have read in some account of your Battle of Monterey, of a 
lovely Mexican girl, who, with the benevolence of an angel in her 
bosom and the robust courage of a hero in her heart, was busily en¬ 
gaged during the bloody conflict, amid the crash of falling houses, the 
groans of the dying, and the wild shriek of battle, in carrying water to 
slake the burning thirst of the wounded of either host. While bending 
over a wounded American soldier, a cannonball struck her and blew 
her to atoms! Sir, I do not charge my brave, generous-hearted coun¬ 
trymen who fought that fight with this. No, No! We who send 
them — we who know that scenes like this, which might send tears 
of sorrow “down Pluto’s iron cheek,” are the invariable, inevitable 
attendants on war — we are accountable for this. And this — this 
is the way we are to be made known to Europe. This — this is to 
be the undying renown of free, republican America! “She has 
stormed a city — killed many of its inhabitants of both sexes — 
she has room!” So it will read. Sir, if this were our only history, 
then may God of His mercy grant that its volume may speedily 
come to a close. 1 

A good example of the value of the concrete in arousing feel¬ 
ings and setting up action tendencies is Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 
which Harriet Beecher Stowe (sister of Henry Ward Beecher) 
gave such a vivid picture of slavery days. This may be regarded 
as a concrete example on a grand scale. Opinions will differ as 
to which exerted the greatest influence in moulding antislavery 
sentiment: Garrison with his Liberator, Phillips with his elo¬ 
quence, or Mrs. Stowe with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We need not 
decide the issue. We know that Uncle Tom’s Cabin exerted 
1 Thomas Corwin: Against War with Mexico. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


254 

an overwhelming influence in rousing slumbering consciences 
against negro slavery in the United States. We know that, 
from the time of its appearance, antislavery sentiment rolled 
a giant wave over the North. There was no argument, no 
reasoning, no statistics; simply a picture. The picture showed 
both the brighter and the darker side of slavery. The darker 
side proved too ugly for Northern sensibility. 

John B. Gough, one of the most popular of lyceum speakers, 
when the American lyceum was in its heyday, got his greatest 
effects with dramatic illustrations, mostly in the form of con¬ 
crete examples and analogies. Gough was a great mimic and 
actor, and acted out some of his more lengthy illustrations in 
dramatic form. He was not a man of literary attainments. 
The two sources of his power were his acting and his use of 
concrete incidents borrowed largely from his own experiences, 
and charged with deep emotion. Billy Sunday uses much the 
same method. 

4. Testimony. Testimony, especially of authorities and 
experts, is not as a rule impressive. It belongs primarily to 
the argumentative speech. There are times, however, when it 
is given in such form as to appeal to the feelings. The following 
from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech nominating Alfred E. Smith 
for the Presidency in 1924 is in point: “It was the illustrious 
Woodrow Wilson, my revered chief and yours, who said, ‘The 
great voice of America does not come from the University. It 
comes in a murmur from the hills and the woods, from the 
farms, the factories and the mills, — rolling on and gaining 
volume until it comes to us from the homes of the common 
people.’” 1 

5. The Literary Quotation. Often the literary quotation plays 
a primary part in impressive speeches. In length it may vary 
from a short sentence to several stanzas of poetry. A speaker 
may even read a whole poem with good effect, if the poem is 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), 
P- 137 - 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


255 

not too long. The primary aim of a literary quotation is to 
add impressiveness to the thought. It must therefore have a 
dear and obvious bearing on the proposition to be supported. 
A good literary quotation, moreover, enriches style and adds 
adornment to a speech. It is plain that the feeling or emotion 
aroused by the quotation must be of the appropriate kind — 
one that will help make vivid and drive home to the listeners 
the idea to be supported. 

The following paragraph from Field’s lecture, “Masters of 
the Situation,” illustrates the effect of well-selected short quo¬ 
tations, as well as of the anecdote. 

Now, no man ever became master of the situation by accident or 
indolence. I believe with Shelley that the Almighty has given men 
and women arms long enough to reach the stars if they will only put 
them out. It was an admirable saying of the Duke of Wellington, 
“No general ever blundered into a great victory.” St. Hilaire said, 
“I ignore the existence of a blind chance, accident, and haphazard 
results.” “He happened to succeed” is a foolish, unmeaning phrase. 
No man happens to succeed. “What do you mix your paints with?” 
asked a visitor of Opie, the painter. “With brains, sir,” was the 
artist’s reply. 

6 . Illustrations. An impressive speech without illustrations 
is a good deal like a home without furnishings. It is possible 
to have a fairly good speech of this type without many illus¬ 
trations, just as it is possible to have a fairly comfortable home 
without much upholstery. But as variety and richness of 
furnishings give distinction to a home, so variety and richness 
of illustrations lend distinction to the impressive speech. One 
has only to examine a few good models to be impressed with 
the wealth of illustrative materials to be found in them. One 
may count as many as a hundred metaphors in many of the 
speeches of Phillips, Ingersoll, and Beecher, a goodly number of 
similes, a liberal sprinkling of analogies and anecdotes, and an 
occasional fable and parable. These illustrations largely consti- 


256 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

tute the pictorial element in the impressive speech, which is 
one of the chief sources of its effectiveness. 

Appealing to Base Motives. Whoever understands the springs 
of human behavior and possesses in some measure the art of 
appeal wields a power that may be used for good or evil. The 
manner of its use falls within the field of ethics rather than 
that of public address. All power is subject to abuse. The 
aim of speech training is frankly to increase the power of the 
individual over his fellows. If a scoundrel wields it, he will be 
all the more a dangerous scoundrel for knowing something 
about the laws of his art. We have no course except to trust 
truth to its own defense, and to assume that “truth crushed to 
earth will rise again.” We proceed on the theory that there is 
more good than evil in the world, and that the race gradually 
gravitates toward right and justice. This may be a sublimely 
audacious assumption, but it is one on which all progress rests. 
No rules or even suggestions can be given as to what is ethically 
proper in a given situation. We must leave to the individual 
the right to use his powers as he chooses, subject only to such 
restraints as society imposes. 

In Conclusion. The impressive speech is by all odds the 
most common and the most popular of all forms of public ad¬ 
dress. An overwhelming majority of all sermons, all so-called 
lyceum lectures, all political speeches, all business speeches 
that aim to stimulate interest and arouse enthusiasm, all occa¬ 
sional addresses, are of this type. It is therefore eminently 
worth while for the young student to understand thoroughly 
the principles that govern the effectiveness of this type of 
speech. It deals principally with beliefs, truths, and precepts 
that are not disputed, but that fail to find full measure of 
fruition in practical living. The aim of such speeches is to 
interpret for us and make impressive the worth and value of 
these beliefs in terms of vital life interests, as means of satis¬ 
fying fundamental human wants. Such speeches therefore 
make a strong appeal to those universal desires, wants, wishes, 


THE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH 


257 

and urges that motivate all normal human beings. So-called 
emotional appeals are always appeals to fundamental human 
wants and desires. While all forms of support may be useful 
in the impressive speech, certain forms will predominate, such 
as the general and the concrete example, illustrations in all 
forms, the literary quotation. It is the more concrete speech 
materials that are effective in rousing the feelings and stirring 
the emotions — those that present concrete images to the 
senses, and therefore deal in pictures. The pictorial quality is 
what gives effectiveness and distinction to the impressive 
speech. If you cannot make speeches like the great masters, 
do not be discouraged. Students in painting do not paint like 
Michelangelo and Rembrandt. Use the great models as sources 
of inspiration as well as guides to better speaking. Hitch your 
wagon to a star. 


EXERCISES 

1. Read carefully and report in writing on Gough’s speech, “Social 
Responsibilities.” Note especially the dramatic effect he gets with 
his illustrations. What forms of support does he use principally? 
Characterize his style. How does it compare with Beecher’s? 
Wendell Phillips’? Ingersoll’s? What do you think of Gough’s 
method of getting his effects largely by high-powered emotional 
illustrations? Is it well adapted to Gough’s subject and purpose? 
Are the effects likely to be permanent? If you have heard Billy 
Sunday, compare the methods of the two men. Comment on 
Gough’s use of suggestion. 

2. Prepare a ten-minute speech on some subject that lends itself to 
impressive treatment, and the purpose sentence of which is not 
disputed. Use freely the general and specific example, illustrations, 
the literary quotation. Use a definite outline. 

3. Read “Acres of Diamonds,” 1 by Russell H. Conwell, again, and 
report on it as a popular lecture. This lecture has a remarkable 
history. Look it up. It was delivered several thousand times, 

1 See page 379 of this volume. 


258 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

and yielded an income of millions of dollars. Try to discover 
reasons for its popularity in terms of criteria set down in this 
text. 


READINGS 

Speeches 

“Acres of Diamonds,” by Russell H. Conwell. 1 
“The Lost Arts,” by Wendell Phillips (Vol. XIII). 

“Shakespeare,” by Robert Ingersoll (Vol. XIII). 

“Wastes and Burdens of Society,” by Henry Ward Beecher 
{Beecher: I). 

“Last Days of the Confederacy,” by John B. Gordon (Vol. XIII). 
“The Battle of Life,” by Mary Livermore {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 
“Through the Great Forest,” by Henry M. Stanley (Vol. XIII). 
“American Wit and Humor,” by Minot J. Savage {Mod. El.: I, 
Vol. VI). 

“Big Blunders,” by T. DeWitt Talmage {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 
“Social Responsibilities,” by John B. Gough (Vol. XIII). 

“Abraham Lincoln,” by Stephen S. Wise {Lindgren). 

“The Press and the Government,” by Irvine L. Lenroot {Lindgren). 

References 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chaps. III-XVI. 
Charles Henry Woolbert: Fundamentals of Speech (Revised Edition, 
1927), Chaps. XV-XVI. 

1 This speech appears on page 379 of this volume. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 

No appeal to reason that is not also an appeal to a want can ever be 
effective. — Harry Allen Overstreet 

The argumentative speech is in some respects the most diffi¬ 
cult of all speeches to prepare well, and it is safe to say that 
more argumentative speeches miss fire than any other kind. 
It is comparatively easy to make impressive the idea that 
Washington was a great patriot, or that Lincoln had in him 
much of the milk of human kindness; or to explain almost 
anything short of Einstein’s theory of relativity and the fourth 
dimension. It is quite another matter to persuade a doubting 
Thomas that the United States should join the League of 
Nations, that the government should own the railroads, or 
that Congress should have passed the McNary-Haugen Bill. 

Difficulties Involved in Argumentative Speeches. One reason 
an argumentative speech is often difficult to prepare is that in 
such a speech we have to move through more stages than in 
any other. We may have to do a great deal of explaining or 
informing before we can begin to argue; then we have to offer 
evidential support, sometimes voluminous and extensive; and 
finally we have to appeal to motives and feelings very much as 
we do in the impressive speech — an aspect, by the way, often 
very much neglected in argumentative speeches. Thus we may 
have in this type of speech, as it were, three speeches in one. 
Especially is this true of subjects that have not been much 
before the public, like the St. Lawrence-to-the-Gulf waterway; 
or that, having been before the public, are technical or involved, 
like the question of our entrance into the World Court or the 
League of Nations. 


259 


260 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Again, many of the questions we argue about are extremely 
complex. That is doubtless why we differ in regard to them. 
For example: Is the United States justified in making such 
large appropriations for national defense as it does? In an 
effort to come to a conclusion on that question, one might 
have to read extensively, interview many leading men in this 
country and in other countries, and study congressional and 
parliamentary debates, with the result that probably he would 
be about as far from a solution as at the beginning. The best- 
informed men would disagree; the wisest could only guess. 
Again, whether or not the United States should undertake to 
build the St. Lawrence waterway can only be determined by 
the opinions of technical engineering experts after an exhaustive 
survey lasting perhaps several years. 

In making argumentative speeches, therefore, you will find 
use for all you have learned about informative and impressive 
speeches; besides, you will have to learn a new process: namely, 
that of proving the truth of propositions of fact that are in 
dispute. When the attitude of your audience is one of lack of 
knowledge or indifference, as is often the case, the task is not 
so difficult. If your audience is in disagreement with you or 
openly hostile, then you have a very delicate problem on your 
hands, which requires tact and skill of a high order. For then 
what you have to get from your hearers is a mental response in 
the form of an admission: “You are right, and we were wrong. 
We now agree with you.” You realize how difficult a task that 
may be. 

It is characteristic of a good speaker or debater that he 
understands the difficulties in the way and does not claim for 
his argument more than it is really worth. One way to bore 
an audience is to make extravagant statements, draw conclu¬ 
sions recklessly, and claim infinitely more for the evidence 
offered than it is worth. The persuasive speaker moves humbly 
and cautiously, and does not ask his audience to accept propo¬ 
sitions on evidence ludicrously insufficient. 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


261 


With this preliminary survey, let us see what may be accom¬ 
plished with the argumentative process in winning acceptance 
for ideas that we cherish and that we wish others to cherish and 
act upon. 

Distinction between Impressive and Argumentative 
Speeches. Let us recall that in impressive speeches we are 
dealing with accepted beliefs, or propositions that are not seri¬ 
ously disputed; that is, the truth of them is not in question. 
The problem is to give such beliefs a richer and a more vital 
meaning; make them dynamic by charging them with feeling 
and emotion; show that by acting in accordance with them 
we shall be able to satisfy more abundantly the fundamental 
wants of human nature — material, spiritual, aesthetic. 

In argumentative speeches we are dealing with propositions 
that are disputed, involving both judgments of fact and judg¬ 
ments of value. Their truth is in doubt or even positively 
denied. They are questions of opinion: different persons hold 
different views on them. The argumentative speech, therefore, 
presents a double problem. One is to establish the truth or 
falsity of propositions of fact; the other is to interpret the 
worth of propositions of policy in terms of their capacity to 
satisfy human wants, and thus drive them home through 
appeal to motives. There is always this twofold aspect of the 
persuasive problem in argumentative speeches. Some examples 
will make this plain. 

Suppose our purpose is to show that college athletics inter¬ 
fere too much with college education. The extent of interfer¬ 
ence is a question of fact. Suppose we succeed in establishing 
with a reasonable degree of probability that college athletics in¬ 
terfere to some extent with study. The question still remains: 
How does this interference affect student life? To what extent 
is it bad? To what extent may it be good? That is a matter for 
interpretation in terms of vital life interests. Such interpre¬ 
tation would involve an appeal to motives. 

Again, are we to regard chain stores as detrimental to our 


262 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


best interests? That will depend on several questions, which 
are matters of fact. Do chain stores effect substantial econo¬ 
mies for consumers? Do they tend to wealth concentration? 
Are local chain store managers likely to become permanent resi¬ 
dents of a community? All these are questions of fact, and we 
have to estimate them the best we can by direct and indirect 
evidence. It would probably be easy to show that chain stores 
do offer economies to consumers, that they tend to wealth con¬ 
centration, or that local managers are seldom permanent resi¬ 
dents of a community. Most people would probably regard 
the first effect good, and the other two not so good. The ques¬ 
tion still remains: How good is the first, and how bad are the 
other two? Opinions would differ. When we come to interpret 
these effects in terms of the satisfaction of human wants, we 
are in the field of motivation. 

In Argumentative Speeches We Depend on Probabilities. It 

is a safe statement to make that no proposition affording a 
good subject for an argumentative speech or a debate can be 
conclusively proved. If it could be, it would no longer be in 
doubt, and would not, therefore, by definition, be a subject for 
an argumentative speech. To what extent do chain stores 
effect economies for consumers? We do not know. It is ex¬ 
tremely difficult to get at the facts. We have to depend on 
probabilities. Will the League of Nations succeed in prevent¬ 
ing great wars? We do not know. Some people think they do 
know, but enthusiasm does not spell certainty. Would a labor 
party in the United States be as successful as it has been in 
England? We cannot be sure of it. We can only guess. Al¬ 
ways there is an element of uncertainty; always we must act, 
if at all, on the strength of probabilities. 

What Is Adequate Support for a Disputed Proposition? When 
we have established the truth of a proposition or the correctness 
of an opinion with a reasonable degree of probability so far as 
the facts involved are concerned — given it an adequate proof 

that does not mean that we have given the proposition 



THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 263 

adequate support. We have still to determine its affective 
meaning; that is, what it may be worth in the way of satisfying 
human wants. We may show plausibly, for example, that the 
St. Lawrence waterway is feasible from an engineering point 
of view, financially possible, and that Canada will join in the 
construction. When that is accomplished — and it may be a 
long and laborious process — we have still the same problem 
before us as in impressive speeches; namely, to drive home 
with impressive facts, vivid examples or hypothetical cases, 
illustrations, pictures, what the project or proposal is worth 
in terms of purposeful and pleasurable living — of satisfying 
fundamental human wants. 

These two processes are the warp and woof of argument. 
They are involved in supporting the main ideas of the speech 
as well as the whole purpose of the speech. It may be a ques¬ 
tion as to which should come first. As a rule, it is better to 
connect at once with the interests of the audience in a general 
way, at least, before indulging in lengthy proof. When once 
it can be shown that the members of the audience have a vital 
interest in a proposition, they will listen to arguments and 
authorities as to its technical and practical aspects. 

The Informative Process in Argumentative Speeches. 
1. Defining Terms. There are certain preliminaries that have 
to be attended to in an argumentative speech. Frequently a 
great deal of exposition is necessary before we really know what 
we are arguing about. It is historically true that many of our 
controversies have resulted from failure to understand the 
meaning of words and phrases, so that while people thought 
they were disputing about the same proposition, they were in 
fact disputing about different propositions. Suppose one were 
to argue that we should uproot Bolshevism in America; one 
might have a hard time defining the term Bolshevism. Or sup¬ 
pose the proposition is that the United States should adopt 
unemployment insurance. There are several forms of unem¬ 
ployment insurance, and the term would have to be carefully 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


264 

defined before an argument on the question could proceed. 
The word adopt might need some attention also. 

In an intercollegiate debate several years ago the question 
was: That the United States should adopt a policy of shipping 
subsidies. That looked innocent enough, but four months of 
intensive study failed to reveal any clear meaning for the 
phrase, “policy of shipping subsidies.” At the time the ques¬ 
tion was being discussed, the United States was paying out 
between one and two million dollars a year to certain mail and 
passenger lines. Was that a shipping subsidy? If so, how could 
any additional subsidy be called adopting a policy? England 
was paying to mail and passenger lines over eight million dollars 
a year. Was that a subsidy? English statesmen strenuously 
denied that it was. They affirmed that the government was 
getting value received in service. Did the question mean that 
the United States government should pay subsidies to ocean 
freight lines? There was no sentiment for aid of that kind. On 
the basis of these facts, how would you define a “policy of ship¬ 
ping subsidies”? The question really was: Should the United 
States give additional aid to certain mail and passenger lines? 

John T. Flynn, writing in the New Republic for April 25, 
1931, on chain stores and the independent merchant, makes the 
following statement: “My own impression is that almost all 
the folly and confusion in the whole discussion arises out of a 
stubborn refusal of everybody engaged in it to define the term 
‘independent’” — and then proceeds to clarify the discussion 
by defining the term “independent.” 

The dictionary sometimes helps to define terms, but not 
always. No dictionary would have thrown any light on the 
shipping subsidy question. In the course of discussion, words 
come to have a technical meaning which no dictionary can 
reckon with. In questions for argumentative speeches or 
debates, it is well to scrutinize every word, and to give such 
definitions as are necessary for a clear understanding of the 
question and no more. 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


265 

An excellent example of how disputes arise and flourish 
through failure to define terms is given by William James. 
Members of a camping party, from which the author had been 
absent on “a solitary ramble,” had got into a dispute as to 
whether a person chasing a squirrel around a tree went round 
the squirrel or not. 

Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contra¬ 
diction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found 
one, as follows: “Which party is right,” I said, “depends on what 
you practically mean by ‘going round’ the squirrel. If you mean 
passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to 
the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does 
go round him, for he occupies these successive positions. But if on 
the contrary you mean being first in front of him, then on the right of 
him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is 
quite obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by compensating 
movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards 
the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinc¬ 
tion, and there is no occasion for any further dispute. You are both 
right and both wrong, according as you conceive the verb ‘ to go round ’ 
in one practical fashion or the other.” 1 

2. Clash of Opinion. An argumentative speech deals with 
controversial questions. Opinions are ranged on both sides. 
Some people believe one way, some another. A good speech of 
this type must not only have arguments for one side; it must 
reckon with arguments on the other side as well. Answering 
objections usually goes by the name of refutation. An argu¬ 
mentative speech, if it is carefully prepared, will have both con¬ 
structive arguments and refutations. 

A good way to get at the heart of a controversial question is 
to line up opinions and contentions of both sides. To do that, 
one must make a careful survey of the whole field. Let us 
take as an example a question that is a bone of contention be¬ 
tween capital and labor: namely, that of the closed shop. 

1 Selected Papers on Philosophy (Everyman’s Library, 1917), p. 198. 


266 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


The leading arguments on both sides would run something like 
this: 

Conflict of Opinion 


Affirmative Contentions 

I. Labor unions have greatly 
benefited the laboring classes. 

A. They have helped to 
raise wages in many in¬ 
dustries. 

B. They have shortened 
hours in many indus¬ 
tries. 

C. They have widely im¬ 
proved the sanitary con¬ 
ditions in shops and 
factories. 

II. The closed shop is necessary 
to the effectual maintenance 
of trade unions, for 

A. It is necessary to suc¬ 
cessful collective bar¬ 
gaining — the chief end 
of trade unions. 

III. The closed shop is not un¬ 
fair to the employer. 

A. It does not unduly inter¬ 
fere with his business. 

IV. The closed shop is not un¬ 
fair to the non-union man. 
A. It is not unreasonable to 

ask him to join a union, 
i. It is for the benefit of 
himself and his class. 


Negative Contentions 

I. (Negative would probably 
admit this.) 


II. The closed shop is not nec¬ 
essary to effectual mainte¬ 
nance of trade unions, for 
A. Collective bargaining is 
carried on successfully 
without it. 

III. The closed shop is unfair to 
the employer. 

A. It unduly interferes with 
him in the management 
of his business. 

IV. It is unfair to the non-union 
man. 

A. It forces him either to 
join a union or remain 
unemployed. 

B. Frequently, he is even 
refused entrance to the 
unions through high fees 
and membership restric¬ 
tions. 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


267 

V. General recognition of the V. The closed shop would re¬ 
closed shop principle would suit in a dangerous labor 

not result in a dangerous monopoly, 

labor monopoly. 

A. The proportion of non¬ 
union labor to union 
labor would always be 
too great for such a re¬ 
sult. 

While this does not represent all the clash on this question 
by any means, it is enough to serve as an example. You will 
observe that there are several head-on clashes in the conflict of 
opinion. When stated in the question form, these constitute 
the real issues in the controversy. 

Every good subject for an argumentative speech lends itself 
to analysis of this kind, although the clash may not always be 
quite so pronounced. The important thing is to realize that 
there are two sides to the question, and to understand if possible 
the reasons for the opposing views. We cannot meet objections, 
remove doubts, or replace opinions unless we understand on 
what foundations those objections, doubts, or opinions rest. 
We have to assume that people who hold divergent opinions 
from our own are just as reasonable and intelligent as we are. 
The whole of truth is not on either side of any debatable ques¬ 
tion. It is a Lincoln tradition that he always understood the 
other side of a legal case so well that he could afford to make 
more admissions than any man in court. It is characteristic 
of one who has a large perspective and a broad view of a ques¬ 
tion that he is not afraid to make admissions and grant con¬ 
cessions to the other side. Only he knows what to admit or 
grant, and what not to admit or grant. 

Forms of Support in Argumentative Speeches. 1. Logical 
Argument. Having selected from the clash of opinion the con¬ 
tentions to be supported or proved, the next step is to find 
proper supports for those contentions. A very important form 


268 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


of support is logical argument, a form of support to which we 
wish now to give special attention. 

A logical argument rests always on two things: evidence , 
which may consist of either facts or opinions or both; and 
reasoning , or inferences drawn from facts and opinions. “Evi¬ 
dence is the material from which we generate proof, and reason¬ 
ing is the process by which we generate it.” 1 

We get facts from our own observation and the testimony of 
others as to their observation. Observation is ultimately the 
source of all facts. To get at facts or establish them may mean 
a long process of observation, experiment, and testing of hypoth¬ 
eses. We distinguish between testimony as to facts and testi¬ 
mony in the form of opinions, or expert testimony. Almost 
anybody may testify as to a fact; only those who are recognized 
as authorities can give dependable opinions. 

We distinguish several kinds of logical arguments, based on 
the nature of the inference made; namely: ( a ) generalization; 
( b ) argument based on causal relationship; and ( c ) analogy. 
These constitute what in law is known as circumstantial evi¬ 
dence, as distinguished from direct evidence; that is, testimony 
as to facts, and authorities. Let us look at these in turn. 

a. The Generalization. A generalization is an inference from 
a number of observed examples of the same class to the whole 
number of examples included in that class. Suppose a survey 
of the life earnings of five thousand college graduates and of a 
like number of high school graduates should show that the 
college graduates average almost twice as much in earnings as 
the high school graduates. We should be justified in drawing 
the general conclusion that on an average college graduates 
earn almost twice as much as high school graduates in the 
course of a lifetime. There might be some exceptions, but the 
conclusion would be very nearly true for the whole number of 
these two classes of students. The inference is clearly from a 

1 James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), p. 232. 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 269 

relatively few examples (although in fact a goodly number) to 
all the examples of the class, or classes in this instance. The 
observed examples here would not constitute one-half of one 
per cent of college students, and a much smaller percentage of 
high school students. Still the generalization would be recog¬ 
nized as carefully made and scientifically valid. This is a 
typical example of the generalization. Observe that the infer¬ 
ence is from the known to the unknown, and that as a rule it 
involves some degree of uncertainty. Every inference is more 
or less a “leap in the dark.” That is, we draw a conclusion for 
a whole class of objects or phenomena on the basis of only a 
relatively few known examples of the class. 

Tests of Argument from Generalization 

1. Is there a sufficiently large number of observed, as compared with 
unobserved, instances to warrant the conclusion? 

2. Are the instances observed fair specimens of the class? 

3. Are there any known exceptions? 

4. Is there a reasonable probability that such a general statement is 
true? 

. In practical speech-making, we cannot always be so careful 
and so scientific as this example suggests. It is often very 
difficult to get a sufficient number of examples to establish the 
law of averages, or a reasonable degree of probability for the 
general statement advanced. 

Much depends on the nature of the examples. In some cases 
a single instance may support a conclusion; in others, nothing 
short of all the examples of a class will support it. If a chemist 
should discover that two elements combine in a certain propor¬ 
tion to form a new chemical compound, that single instance 
would be enough to warrant the conclusion that these elements 
would always so combine. On the other hand, nothing short 
of a complete enumeration would support the generalization 
that all the members of a certain state legislature are over thirty 
years of age. 


270 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

To generalize on too few examples is certainly one of the 
master fallacies of the human mind. We make the statement 
that the people of a certain race are thrifty, or honest, or acquis¬ 
itive; and in support give a few examples of individuals that 
we have observed or heard about. We say that labor unions, 
when they once get control of a shop so that all labor employed 
is union labor, will make unreasonable and annoying regulations; 
and, in support of that, quote an example or two that we happen 
to know about. While such examples may be worth quoting, 
and have a certain probative value, the fact remains that they 
fall far short of giving adequate support to these propositions. 
In the first instance given, their value as proof is not worth 
much. A few instances out of millions, where there are involved 
the variations in behavior which the human species exemplifies, 
cannot be taken as typical for a whole race. Examples of the 
second class carry more weight, for the reason that there is at 
least a degree of probability that the ever-present conflict of 
interest between the employer and the union may result in 
more or less drastic regulations. 

Exceptions do not prove a rule. There is a superstition abroad 
having to do with argument from generalization which fre¬ 
quently finds expression even by learned people; and it is that 
exceptions prove the rule. “ These are the exceptions that 
prove the rule,” we hear so often. A moment’s reflection will 
convince any thinking man that exceptions never prove a rule, 
either singly or in numbers. If for example we say that a 
certain college employs for its faculty only men who have 
Ph.D. degrees, and some one points to an exception which he 
knows about — would that exception prove that all the rest of 
the faculty had Ph.D. degrees? Suppose, on investigation, we 
should find several exceptions; would they prove the rule? 
Would they not do just the opposite and prove that the general 
statement was wholly unsound? Or suppose we make the state¬ 
ment that cooperative enterprises in America have been fail¬ 
ures, and some one points to several conspicuous successes, 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


271 

should we be justified in saying that those exceptions prove 
that all the rest were failures? Assuredly not. 

Exceptio probat regulam is the Latin sentence. The error is 
in translating the last word as “prove” instead of “probe” or 
“test.” Exceptions test a rule. If there are many exceptions 
to a generalization, they show that, to that extent at least, the 
generalization is not sound. 

b. Arguments Based on Causal Relationship. There are two 
kinds of arguments based on causal relationship: ( a ) argument 
from cause to effect; and ( b ) argument from effect to cause. 
Occasionally we have an inference from effect to effect. 

Argument from Cause to Efect. We use this form of argu¬ 
ment constantly in our discussion of social, economic, and 
political reforms. We propose a certain measure, or changes in 
an old one, and infer from the nature of our proposal or changes 
to be made (cause) that certain beneficial results (effect) will 
follow. We passed the prohibition amendment, and supposed 
we should do away with drinking on any large scale. The 
effect was disappointing. We passed certain legislation for farm 
relief, and supposed we should get higher prices for farm prod¬ 
ucts, and again the effect was disappointing. Lincoln used 
this form of argument in his “Springfield Speech,” showing that 
legislation sponsored by the Democratic leaders would tend to 
make slavery national. A college student spends four or more 
years in getting an education in the hope that such education or 
training (cause) will yield returns in larger earning power and 
happier living (effect). In the last case, the inference is rein¬ 
forced by a large number of known examples in which the 
results have been somewhat like those described; that is, 
larger earning power, and supposedly a life with larger satis¬ 
factions. 

Senator William E. Borah used an argument from cause to 
effect in his speech before the Philadelphia Academy of Music, 
December 17, 1924, when in substance he said that if European 
nations are not ready to be governed by a code of international 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


272 

law (cause), then the United States is not prepared to join them 
in a League of Nations (effect): 

Lord Cecil, lately honored for his services in the cause of peace, has 
been quoted as saying: “We have not reached the state in interna¬ 
tional relations at which it is desirable to attempt the codification of 
international law,” which is in effect to say we cannot now consent to 
be governed by international law. Why it is not desirable we are not 
informed. Not desirable to be governed by law and the courts rather 
than secret diplomacy, intrigue, overreaching imperialism, politics 
and force? It would seem at least to be desirable. We have waited 
three thousand years. If the time has not come for Europe to ac¬ 
knowledge the reign of law and to be governed by it in international 
affairs, then it is positively certain that the time has not come for the 
people of this country to be governed by European politics. We will 
hesitate to enter a game the rules of which are not known but exist, 
if they exist at all, in the caprice and the ambitions of a few men. 1 

Argument from Effect to Cause. Suppose that we are passing 
through a business depression. That is an effect of some cause 
or causes. We are trying to discover the causes. So complex 
are they that not even the greatest economic authorities can 
agree on them. Some think the flow of money, or the currency 
in some way, is a primary cause. Others think the business 
cycle accounts for depressions. Still others think it is primarily 
a matter of psychology; that if people would assume that good 
times are coming and buy freely, prosperity soon would perch 
on our banner. This is a good example of how difficult it may 
be to find the cause or causes of a given effect. 

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Douglas repeatedly made 
the statement that he did not care whether slavery was voted 
up or voted down. Lincoln took him at his word, and used an 
effect-to-cause argument by trying to show that Douglas in this 
way was preparing the public mind for making slavery a national 
institution. In other words, the proclaiming of such a senti¬ 
ment was an effect of a disposition or at least a willingness on 
1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), p. 75. 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


273 

Douglas’ part to see slavery become a national institution 
(cause). 

Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes, in his speech before the 
American Bar Association, September, 1925, draws conclusions 
from certain observed facts, based on effect-to-cause inferences. 

While with a different purpose, we observe the manifestations of 
the same spirit in the efforts to interfere with instruction in our 
schools, not to promote the acquisition of knowledge, but to obstruct 
it. The Supreme Court of the United States has had occasion to deal 
with such an attempt to control teaching in private schools. Under a 
statute, forbidding the teaching of any other than the English language 
to a pupil who had not passed the eighth grade, a teacher was sub¬ 
jected to a criminal prosecution for teaching the German language. 
Even the court, with its necessarily limited judicial vision, could see 
what lay behind such an enactment and condemned it as an un¬ 
warranted interference with the constitutional guarantee of liberty. 
“Evidently,” said the court, “the legislature has attempted materially 
to interfere with the calling of modern language teachers, with the 
opportunities of pupils to acquire knowledge, and with the power of 
parents to control the education of their own children.” The statute 
as applied was found to be arbitrary and without reasonable relation 
to any end within the competency of the state. The same principle 
was applied in the Oregon school case where the statute under review 
in substance attempted to interfere with the privilege in instruction 
in private schools. “The child,” said the Supreme Court, “is not 
the mere creature of the state. Those who nurture him and direct 
his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognize and 
prepare him for additional obligations.” Manifestly the purpose of 
the statute was not to aid education, but arbitrarily to interfere with 
the freedom of instruction. 1 

Tests of Argument from Causal Relationship 

In testing the strength of this argument, it is well to ask: 

1. Is the cause sufficient to produce the effect? 

2. Could other causes have produced or helped to produce the effect? 

3. Is it possible to eliminate other causes than the one assigned? 

1 Ibid., p. 176. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


274 

c. The Analogy. The analogy, as a form of support, occupies 
so important a place in argumentative speeches and debates 
that it requires special attention. We distinguish between the 
analogy as a form of argument and the analogy as a form of 
illustration. 

The analogy is essentially an inference that, because two 
things are alike in certain known particulars, they are probably 
alike in certain unknown particulars. For instance, in a certain 
experiment with deep and shallow plowing for oats, it was 
found that a field plowed four inches deep yielded twenty- 
seven bushels an acre while another field, plowed ten inches 
deep, yielded seventy bushels. If a farmer were to conclude 
that by plowing ten inches deep for oats, he, too, could raise as 
much as seventy bushels an acre, he would reason by analogy. 
The two undertakings would be alike in certain known particu¬ 
lars: the soil in the two places would, perhaps, be much the 
same; so would be the seed, climate, rainfall, time of planting, 
and other factors. These are the points of known resemblance. 
From these we infer that the two examples would be alike in the 
one unknown particular — namely, the big yield. In the same 
way we might infer that, because in England the British Labor 
Party has made such rapid progress and won such signal success, . 
a labor party organized in the United States in much the same 
way would be successful here. So far as it can be shown that 
conditions affecting the progress of such a party are alike in the 
two countries, just so far would our inference be valid. If, on 
the other hand, it can be shown that conditions in certain vital 
respects are essentially different — e.g., that labor receives a 
fairer share of the national income here than it does in Great 
Britain — then that would be a vital fact to reckon with and 
would affect the conclusion drawn. We infer by analogy that 
because the city manager plan has worked well in some cities, 
it will work well in others. 

It will be seen that the argument is much like the generaliza¬ 
tion. Both are inductive arguments, based on examples. The 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


275 


difference is that in the argument from generalization we usu¬ 
ally have a considerable number of instances on which to base 
our inference, and we base our conclusion on the assumption 
that what is true of the instances or examples observed is true 
of the whole class of such related instances; while in the analogy 
there is frequently only one or, at most, only a very few exam¬ 
ples, the inference being based on the resemblances between 
the instances given rather than on any general truth with ref¬ 
erence to all such instances. 

Sometimes the analogy is a comparison of relationships rather 
than matters of fact. In that form the analogy is more an 
illustration than an argument. Webster used this form of 
analogy in opening his “Reply to Hayne”: 

Mr. President, when the mariner has been tossed for many days in 
thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of 
the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his 
latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his 
true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we float farther 
on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we de¬ 
parted, that we may, at least, be able to conjecture where we now are. 

I ask for the reading of the resolution before the Senate. 


Tests of the Argument from Analogy 

1. Are the two examples alike in all essential particulars; that is, 
particulars necessary to reach a conclusion on the point of issue? 

2. Are the facts on which the analogy is based true? If we argue that 
a certain state should have an income tax because such a tax has 
been successful in another state, we should satisfy ourselves that 
the tax has in fact been successful where tried. 

2. Facts and Statistics. “The orator is thereby an orator,” 
says Emerson, “that he keeps his feet ever on a fact.” 

Arguments frequently rest largely on facts, and sometimes 
the facts are voluminous and involved. An argument either 
for or against chain stores must necessarily deal at length with 


276 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

the economies of that method of retailing and the social effects 
of replacing the independent merchant. What economies are 
there in buying in large quantities, in eliminating middlemen, 
in larger volumes of retail sales, in the “cash and carry” system? 
On questions like these, facts speak. Such facts must come 
from authentic sources. 

Recently, in a speech, a student undertook to show that 
electric rates given by private utilities in the United States 
compared favorably with the rates given by the publicly 
owned electric utilities in Ontario, Canada, when all factors in 
the situation were considered. He presented figures that were 
derived from a study of the Ontario system by an official of 
one of the large electric companies of America, with which he 
was associated. Such a source is so likely to be prejudiced 
and unreliable that it should be carefully scrutinized before 
being used. In any event, popular distrust of statistics pre¬ 
pared by interested parties robs the data, however sound, of 
much of their effectiveness as support, and a speaker will do 
well to avoid them. 

An argument on farm relief would be in large part sta¬ 
tistical. It would probably aim to show in graphic form the 
decrease in the purchasing power of the farmer. It would prob¬ 
ably show the cost of production of different farm products 
in different parts of the country so as to get something ap¬ 
proaching an average. To do that, it would be necessary to 
take advantage of surveys made in the field of farm produc¬ 
tion. One can readily realize how involved such figures might 
be. The same holds true for many questions that we argue 
about. 

Figures require the same careful analysis and clear presen¬ 
tation as other ideas. One must have constant regard for the 
limitations of an audience in following and analyzing complicated 
statistics. Give no more figures than are necessary to make 
your point. Reduce them to their simplest terms. Compari¬ 
sons and contrasts are effective here as elsewhere. Charts are 



THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


277 

a great aid here for public presentation, but should be guardedly 
used in practice speaking. 

3. Testimonial Evidence. We have already discussed testi¬ 
mony as a form of support in Chapter VII. In argumentative 
speeches the testimony of specialists or authorities is often 
very important. This is true especially of questions that in¬ 
volve broad interests and technical knowledge. The ordinary 
person has no opportunity to acquaint himself with all the 
possible angles of a big question. There is, moreover, a limit 
to the amount of logical argument that the average audience 
will listen to on any question. We have therefore to depend on 
the opinions of men who are authorities, who have had oppor¬ 
tunity to study the question perhaps for many years. 

Edward Steiner has been a close student of American immi¬ 
grants for thirty years. His opinion on the subject of immigra¬ 
tion is valuable. A. Eustace Haydon of the University of 
Chicago has made an exhaustive study of the great religions 
of the world; his opinions in that field have much weight. 
Roger Babson has spent most of his life trying to understand 
the neurology of American business. His opinion in that field 
should be worth something. And so on. 

Here it is worth stressing that what is wanted is acceptance 
for ideas, and not quotations from authorities for their own 
sake. In debates especially, one frequently hears so many 
authorities quoted that one almost comes to believe that they 
are an end in themselves. They are not. They are used to 
support propositions. Of good authorities, those most accept¬ 
able to the audience are the ones to use. An authority should 
be well informed, unprejudiced, and, above all, acceptable to 
the audience. 

4. Restatement , Repetition. We have occasion to use restate¬ 
ment and repetition in argumentative speeches more than in 
any other, the reason being that they are likely to be the most 
difficult to follow. It is literally true that in order to have the 
members of an audience follow an argumentative speech, we 


278 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

must first tell them what we are going to do; then, as we pro¬ 
ceed to do it, we must constantly remind them that we are 
now doing it; and when we have done it, we must tell them 
that we have concluded. What we mean more specifically is 
that when we begin the speech, or any main division of it, we 
usually point out the direction in which we are going to move, 
by means of questions direct and indirect. We say after stating 
a proposition, “Let us look at this a moment.” Then, as we 
proceed with each main idea of the speech, we relate our speech 
materials to that idea, to link up purpose and thought con¬ 
stantly. Only by so doing can we have a coherent speech. 
Finally, when we have covered the ground, we take a backward 
glance, make a brief survey of what we have said in the form 
of a summary. All this requires repetition; it also requires 
art not to make our method too obtrusive. Usually there is 
too much perfunctory summarizing in an argumentative speech. 
There should be no more summarizing than is necessary for 
clear progress. 

We also repeat for emphasis as well as for clearness. To 
repeat a significant word or statement, or the substance of an 
argument, is to emphasize it, to make it occupy a larger.place 
than other ideas in the consciousness of an audience. The 
human mind is so constituted that its tendency is to accept 
ideas presented to it unless there is considerable reason for 
doubt. Especially is this true of the mind in its native and un¬ 
cultivated state. Even with trained minds, repetition tends to 
remove doubt if it is not too pronounced. In Dooley’s version 
of it, “If you tell me a thing often enough, I will believe it.” 
There is much good psychology in this; only, like most general 
statements, we have to accept it with some reservation. If 
doubt is pronounced, no amount of repetition will remove it 
from a cultivated mind. 

5. Illustrations. Illustrations have their place in argumenta¬ 
tive speeches, although they are not likely to be used so freely 
here as in other types, especially in the process of establishing 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


279 

the truth of propositions. They are especially useful in estab¬ 
lishing a common ground of interest and feeling through refer¬ 
ence to experience. Hear what Henry Ward Beecher has to 
say on the subject. 

An illustration is a window in an argument , and lets in light. You 
may reason without an illustration; but where you are employing a 
process of pure reasoning and have arrived at a conclusion, if you can 
then by an illustration flash back light upon what you have said, you 
will bring into the minds of your audience a realization of your argu¬ 
ment that they cannot get in any other way. I have seen an audience, 
time and again, follow an argument, doubtfully, laboriously, almost 
suspiciously, and look at one another, as much as to say, “Is he going 
right?” — until the place is arrived at, where the speaker says, “It is 
like —” and then they listen eagerly for what it is like; and when some 
apt illustration is thrown out before them, there is a sense of relief, as 
though they said, “Yes, he is right.” If you have cheated them, so 
much the worse for you; but if your illustrations are as true as your 
argument, and your argument true as the truth itself, then you have 
helped them a great deal. So that, as a mere matter of help to reason, 
illustrations are of vast utility in speaking to an audience. 1 

This comment of Beecher’s is suggestive of the difficulty which 
the ordinary audience finds in following a logical argument. 
Even Beecher’s audiences, who were more than ordinarily 
cultured, apparently were not sure of themselves until they 
had their views grounded in solid experience — the common 
meeting ground for us all. “There is an inherent difficulty,” 
as Walter Lippmann says, “about using the method of reason 
to deal with an unreasoning world.” Hence the value of illus¬ 
trations to illumine the dark places in an argument. 

When Wendell Phillips expresses an idea that he wishes to 
drive home, he does not beat around the bush, nor argue any 
more than is necessary. He immediately touches off a thought 
pattern that brings the idea within the experience of his hearers. 
The new is at once connected with the old and assimilated to it. 

1 Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim Press: First Series, p. 158. 


280 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


To dwell too long on the new and unfamiliar, without relating 
it to the old and familiar, tires the mind and puts too heavy a 
burden on the attention. 

Appeal to Motives in Argumentative Speeches. In consider¬ 
ing this phase of the subject, we have to remember that the 
argumentative speech, as a rule, deals with two kinds of propo¬ 
sitions: namely, those based essentially on facts, and those based 
on matters of policy. To put it another way, and perhaps more 
accurately, an argumentative speech deals with beliefs based on 
facts, and beliefs based on desire. The same belief may be 
based on both fact and desire, and very often is. Let us make 
this clear by examples. Suppose one is arguing for support of 
the League of Nations, and the advisability of the United 
States joining it. One of the propositions he would probably 
discuss is this: Has the League exercised salutary influence in 
preventing warfare? And if so, to what extent? This is first 
of all a question of fact, and as such, any motivation in regard 
to it is beside the point. What is needed is evidence and logical 
inference to establish the truth in regard to it, whatever that is. 
Suppose, now, that there is reasonably satisfactory evidence to 
show that the League has been instrumental in preventing con¬ 
flict. Then it becomes proper to interpret that fact for the 
audience in terms of wants satisfied and desires fulfilled. This 
is an appeal to motives. Here is a proposition, then, that 
requires support both in the form of logical argument and in the 
form of motivation. Just how much of each form of support to 
give would depend altogether on the nature of the occasion 
and the audience. If the audience were hostile to the League, 
it would be difficult to create in them a “desire system” in 
regard to joining it. In other words, motivation would be ex¬ 
tremely difficult. Whereas with an audience favorable to the 
League, motivation would be easy. 

Suppose we were to have a debate on the question considered 
above: Resolved, that the League of Nations has been instru¬ 
mental in preventing conflict among nations. When so limited, 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


281 


the question is one solely of fact, and affords no opportunity 
for any appeal to motives. It is very seldom, however, that 
a question is so limited for debate. Usually questions for 
debate or for argumentative speeches are stated as questions 
of policy, and afford ample opportunities for motivation. It 
is, then, just as important in argumentative speeches as in 
impressive speeches to link up your discussion with the interests 
of the audience. Your aim here is not only to win acceptance 
for beliefs, but make them potent for influencing behavior. 
The ultimate aim is exactly the same as in the impressive 
speech. 

Some of the first questions, then, to ask in any argumentative 
speech are these: What interest does my audience have in this 
subject? What interest can I make them have in it? How 
does it touch their lives? What wants will it satisfy? What 
satisfactions will it give? What fears will it allay? What 
pleasures will it afford? Every question worth discussing must 
affect our lives, in the long run, more or less vitally and con¬ 
cretely. The problem is to discover how, and to bring the 
“how” vividly home to your hearers. 

Refer to Chapter IX, “Motivation: Want Appeal,” and 
then ask yourself as many questions as you can touching the 
interests of your audience in the subject like the following: 

1. Does it affect their property interests — touch their pocketbooks? 

2. Does it affect their safety, health; tend to prevent disease, ac¬ 
cident? 

3. Does it affect family life, home, children, friends? 

4. Can you appeal to rivalry, pride, desire for power, personal worth, 
social recognition? 

5. Is the reputation of the members of your audience involved? Fear 
of ridicule or public censure? 

6. Are human rights involved? Justice, liberty? 

7. How does the question affect opportunities to enjoy art, drama, 
and in general gratify aesthetic tastes? 

8. Is patriotism involved? 


282 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


These are suggestions only to open up to you opportunities 
along this line. Human wants and desires are varied. It is 
your problem to discover as many as possible and show how 
the belief or action you desire from your audience will satisfy 
these wants. 

Main Contentions and Motives. Every main contention, or 
leading proposition, in your argumentative speech should be 
selected and phrased so as to permit of appeal to motives, when¬ 
ever possible. For example, in a debate on the abolition of the 
jury, a question recently used in a college debating league, 
those who defended the jury system used such contentions as 
the following: 

1. The conditions under which the jury arose are still with us. 

2. The jury is made up of fairly intelligent common people who under¬ 
stand life. 

3. Delays in trials are caused by court procedure rather than by 
juries. 

4. Judges are more subject than juries to political influence. 

These propositions are all usable, but better ones probably 
could have been selected. Consider the following: 

1. The jury is still needed to protect common people in their property 
rights. 

2. The jury is our greatest safeguard of Anglo-Saxon liberties. 

3. The jury is less subject to sinister influences than any body of 
judges. 

The first and second of these propositions lend themselves 
readily to the so-called want appeal; the third one less so 
perhaps, although not necessarily. It is difficult to see the 
importance of this until you come to develop your argument. 
Under the first as restated, you could deal with the historical 
evolution of the jury, but always to show that the jury is still 
needed to protect property rights. In the second, you would 
have an excellent opportunity to show how much the jury has 
meant as an instrument for preserving our liberties. In fact, 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


283 

in one of the debates on this question, I heard a student present 
on this very subject one of the most powerful appeals I have 
ever heard in a debate. I was made to forget that I was listen¬ 
ing to a debate, and to remember only that here was a question 
of supreme importance, and that neither life nor property 
would be safe if the jury were once abolished! The speaker 
dwelt at length on the price in blood and treasure at which our 
liberties have been bought, and thus impressed upon us how 
much was at stake. It was an unusually effective emotional 
appeal, with powerful motivation. 

In arguing for the St. Lawrence waterway, it would be a 
great mistake to open with a technical argument on its feasi¬ 
bility. It would be tedious and tire any ordinary audience in 
a short time. The proper method of approach is to show what 
the waterway will do for the people of the Northwest. Will it 
give farmers seven or eight cents more per bushel for their 
wheat as claimed for it? If it will, that is of importance, not 
only to farmers, but to all who do business with them. Will it 
lower carrying charges on goods from Europe and the East? 
That is vital too. First show what the waterway will accom¬ 
plish, what wants it will satisfy; and when you have done that, 
you will find your listeners eager to hear arguments on the 
technical aspects of it. 

H. A. Overstreet, in his Influencing Human Behavior , has 
this to say on this subject: 

“No appeal to reason that is not also an appeal to a want is ever 
effective.” That ought to dispose of a good deal of futile arguing. . . . 

Thought (reason) is, at bottom, an instrument of action; and 
action, whatever it may be, springs out of what we fundamentally 
desire. There is, indeed, a place in life — a most important place — 
for pure thought — thought, that is, which has no interest in imme¬ 
diate action. But for the most part, thought (reason) is, for us, an in¬ 
strument of exploration; it enables us to see more clearly where we 
are going, and how we may best go. But where do we actually wish 
to go? If we are sure of that, then we gladly enough busy ourselves 
to find ideas which point the path and clear the way. 


284 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Hence, as we have seen, the arguer must first arouse in his re¬ 
spondent a real want to know what is being argued about, a real wish 
to understand, or his argumentation is only words. The trouble with 
most arguers is that they are too much in a hurry to unload themselves. 
They quite forget that, preliminary to the unloading, there must be 
awakened in the respondent an eagerness to want. 

That perhaps is the best piece of advice which can be given to 
would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, 
in politics, etc.: first arouse in the other person an eager want. 

He who can do this has the world with him. He who cannot, 
walks a lonely way. 

Getting on Common Ground. This is the aim of all speaking 
— to get on common ground with one’s listeners; common 
ground of understanding, common ground of belief, common 
ground of interest and feeling. Even in entertainment speeches, 
the aim is unmistakably to get on common ground of pleasur¬ 
able feeling. This is a point of view which a speaker should 
always keep in mind. It is a sort of touchstone, serving as 
guide for the selection and handling of materials, for all ideas 
and forms of support must be moulded in harmony with that 
aim. Logical argument is good only in so far as it helps to 
bring policies and beliefs into line with the views and vital 
interests of the listeners. It is a laborious method that taxes 
mental effort to the maximum, and should be used cautiously 
with mixed audiences, and only with a liberal spri nkli ng of 
concrete speech materials. 

Here is the opinion of a platform genius after fifty years in 
the pulpit and on the platform: 

Most men are feeble in logical power. So far from being benefited 
by an exact concatenated development of truth, they are in general 
utterly unable to follow it. At the second or third step they lose the 
clew. The greatest number of men, particularly uncultivated people, 
receive their truth by facts placed in juxtaposition rather than in 
philosophical sequence. Thus a line of fact or a series of parables will 
be better adapted to most audiences than a regular unfolding of a 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 285 

train of thought from the germinal point to the fruitful end. The more 
select portion of an intelligent audience, on the other hand, sympa¬ 
thize with truth delivered in its highest philosophic forms. There is a 
distinct pleasure to them in the evolution of an argument. They 
rejoice to see a structure built up, tier upon tier, and story upon 
story. They glow with delight as the long chain is welded, link by 
link. And if the preacher himself be of this mind, and if he receive 
the commendations of the most thoughtful and cultured of his peo¬ 
ple, it is quite natural that he should fall wholly under the influence 
of this style of sermonizing; so he will feed one mouth, and starve a 
hundred. 1 

To get on common ground of belief with your hearers, it is 
important that you should understand what their beliefs are. 
A careful analysis of their views, prejudices, and preconceived 
notions is necessary to get the best results. When Beecher was 
in England, before hostile audiences that would not let him 
speak, he did not argue with them about the sacred right of 
free speech. He knew that Englishmen prided themselves on 
their practice of fair play, and so he immediately struck that 
note. “If I do not mistake the tone and temper of English¬ 
men,” he said in his “ Liverpool Speech,” “ they had rather have 
a man who opposes them in a manly way than a sneak that 
agrees with them in an unmanly way.” 

An unusual example of the method of getting on common 
ground is that of Lincoln in the “Cooper Union Speech.” Lin¬ 
coln, in the first half of his “Cooper Union Speech,” i860, sought 
to show that the policy of the Republican Party with reference 
to slavery was in line with the policy of the framers of the gov¬ 
ernment. Douglas sought to do the same thing. Why? Be¬ 
cause both knew that their followers had almost a reverential 
regard for the opinions of the founding fathers. Lincoln proved 
with reasonable conclusiveness that he was advocating the same 
policy as the founders, and the result was that thousands of 
people flocked to his standard, saying in effect, That policy 
1 Henry Ward Beecher: Yale Lectures on Preaching- The Pilgrim 
Press: First Series, p. 219. 


286 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


suits us. We’ll be right with you.” Lincoln did not argue the 
case on its merits at that time, although he had done so in the 
Lincoln-Douglas debates. He simply sought to bring his prin¬ 
ciples within an approved line of policy acceptable to his con¬ 
stituents. He likened the unaccepted to the accepted. In 
this way he got on common ground with his hearers. 

Consider what a labored argument might be made on the 
question whether our experiment in popular government is 
worth while. By a single illustration (analogy), Beecher not 
only floods the subject with light but goes a long way toward 
winning acceptance for his proposition. 

A worse thing is sometimes a great deal better than a better thing. 
William has been to school for more than a year, and his teacher says 
to him one day: “Now, William, I am afraid your father will think 
that I am not doing well by you; you must write a composition — 
you must send your father a good composition to show what you are 
doing.” Well, William never did write a composition, and he does not 
know how. “Oh, write about something that you do know about 
— write about your father’s farm,” and so being goaded to his task, 
William says: “ A cow is a useful animal. A cow has four legs and two 
horns. A cow gives good milk. I love good milk. William Brad¬ 
shaw.” The master looks over his shoulder, and says: “Poof! your 
father will think you are a cow. Here, give me that composition, I’ll 
fix it.” So he takes it home and fixes it. Here it reads: “When the 
sun casts off the dusky garments of the night, and appearing o’er the 
orient hills, sips the dewdrops pendant from every leaf, the milkmaid 
goes afield chanting her matin song,” and so on, and so on. Now 
while, rhetorically, the mister’s composition was unspeakably better 
than William’s, as a part of William’s education, his own poor scrawly 
lines are unspeakably better than the one that has been “fixed” for 
him. No man ever yet learned by having somebody else learn for 
him. A man learns arithmetic by blunder in and blunder out, but at 
last he gets it. A man learns to write through scrawling; a man 
learns to swim by going into the water; a man learns to vote by voting. 
Now we are attempting to make a Government; we are attempting 
to teach sixty millions of men how to conduct a Government by self- 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


287 

control, by knowledge, by intelligence, by fair opportunity to practice. 
It is better that we should have sixty millions of men learning through 
their own mistakes how to govern themselves, than it is to have an 
arbitrary Government with the whole of the rest of the people 
ignorant. 1 

When the Audience Is Hostile. While the argumentative 
speech has a large place in our life economy, still it is a fact 
that outside of deliberative assemblies the occasions are few 
when a speaker sets out to change other persons’ views in the 
face of hostile opinion. As has already been suggested, an 
audience assembled to hear a speaker is almost invariably 
favorable to the speaker’s views in overwhelming numbers. A 
Republican spellbinder, as a rule, talks to an audience pre¬ 
dominantly Republican. A Democrat talks to an audience 
largely Democratic in sympathy. A Socialist talks to an audi¬ 
ence whose views are much like his own. It is the same in 
business circles, religious circles, and any other circles or groups. 
There are exceptions, of course, especially in great crises, where 
there is always a violent clash of conflicting interests; but in the 
main the statement holds true. There is usually a fringe of 
non-sympathizers or, it may be, hostile hearers, but they almost 
always are in the small minority. 

When a speaker is venturesome enough to try to win over a 
hostile audience, his problem is one of bridging the gulf between 
himself and his hearers by the use of propositions that are 
accepted by the audience. There is no use in trying to win 
assent to one unwelcome proposition by the use of another 
unwelcome one. The most effective process is to avoid saying 
anything that the audience can take issue with; or, in psycho¬ 
logical parlance, the speaker must scrupulously avoid stirring 
up contrariant ideas. Can this be done? Probably, if the 
speaker has the art to do it. The differences in views and con¬ 
victions among people are due more to misunderstanding and 
ignorance than to any differences in mental make-up, not to 
1 “The Reign of the Common People.” 


288 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


say to perversity. On the basis of the same facts, most persons 
will act in the same way although predispositions may influence 
their conduct. There are conflicts of interest, to be sure, and 
people hold opinions because it is to their interest to hold them, 
or at least they think so. But for every real conflict of interests 
causing divergent views, there are a hundred instances where 
differences in opinions result from ignorance and misunder¬ 
standing. 

The real problem, therefore, is to discover the sources of 
opinions and to understand on what foundations they rest. 
This may require a thorough understanding of the whole ques¬ 
tion and, what is more important still, a sympathetic under¬ 
standing of the opinions and beliefs which you wish to change. 
Lincoln has well expressed this attitude as follows: 

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion , 
kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old 
and true maxim that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon 
of gall. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first 
convince him that you are his sincere friend. There is the drop of 
honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, when once 
gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of 
the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On 
the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his 
action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will 
retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and heart; 
and though your cause be naked truth itself, and though you throw it 
with more than Herculean force and precision, you will be no more 
able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a 
rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who 
would lead him even to his own best interests. 

Emerson, in his lecture on eloquence, has expressed what some 
will regard as an extreme view of what may be accomplished 
by way of influencing hostile opinion: 

There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is 
most unwilling to receive, — a statement possible, so broad and so 


THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 289 

pungent, that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it 
or die of it. Else there would be no such word as eloquence, which 
means this. The listener cannot hide from himself that something has 
been shown him and the whole world, which he did not wish to see; 
and as he cannot dispose of it, it disposes of him. The history of 
public men and affairs in America will readily furnish tragic examples 
of this fatal force. 

Strategy of Approach. What approach a speaker should 
make to his audience is a matter of strategy. Suppose his 
audience is largely favorable, with a small element hostile. 
Should a political speaker, for example, aim to win over the 
few intransigents with logical argument, authorities, and what¬ 
ever persuasive means are at his command? Or should he 
aim to fire his large group of sympathizers with enthusiasm for 
the cause, in the hope that the enthusiasm will spread to as 
large a number in the community as possible? As a matter of 
hard, practical sense, the latter aim will probably be productive 
of the best results. That course is much easier, involves a 
much simpler process, assuming that the bulk of the audience is 
friendly. At any rate, we may feel sure that it is the course 
pursued by most political speakers, and others as well. As 
Phillips put it in the antislavery struggle, “ There are far more 
dead hearts to be quickened than confused intellects to be 
cleared up: more dumb dogs to be made to speak than doubt¬ 
ing consciences to be enlightened.” In the choice of aims or 
purposes, a speaker will always be guided by the character of 
his audience. 

In Conclusion. We probably reach more decisions through 
the argumentative process than we are generally given credit 
for. Whenever we consider reasons pro and con for any opinion 
or course of conduct, whether it be in conversation, in the club, 
political forum, convention, legislative assembly, congress, par¬ 
liament, we use the argumentative method. We should there¬ 
fore be familiar with the different types of logical argument, 
so that we can check up on our thought processes. It may 


290 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


reveal to us how flimsy are the foundations on which most of 
our opinions rest. We should remember that logical argument 
tends merely to establish the truth of propositions or the cor¬ 
rectness of opinions, with varying degrees of probability. It is 
therefore only one kind of support in the argumentative speech. 
When the truth of a proposition has been established with some 
degree of probability, there still remains the problem of inter¬ 
preting and driving home the affective meaning of the idea or 
proposition. We do this through an appeal to motives, to funda¬ 
mental human wants — intellectual, material, aesthetic. The 
problem here is exactly the same as the problem in the impressive 
speech. It is to charge ideas with a richer meaning, through 
appeal to the feelings and emotions. Concrete speech materials, 
such as the general and specific example and all forms of illus¬ 
trations, are all-important for this purpose. To influence action 
in some form is always the end in an argumentative speech. 
It may aim at an immediate and definite overt action; or it 
may aim at establishing certain views or attitudes which, at 
the appropriate time may result in action. The end is always 
to make beliefs function in behavior. 


EXERCISES 

1. Make a written report on one of the speeches assigned for reading, 

on the following points: 

a. Give an outline of purpose and main divisions of speech. 

b. What forms of support predominate? 

c. What illustrations are used? Are they effective? 

d. Give examples of comparing the unaccepted to the accepted. 

e. Classify the motives appealed to. 

/. In what respects is the speech weak and unconvincing? Is it 
sufficiently concrete? 

g. Which is the greater problem in this speech: to establish the 
probable truth of the propositions, or to show their worth to 
us in gratifying desires and satisfying wants? 



THE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH 


291 

2. Discuss orally in class an argumentative speech that you have 
recently heard, using the above criteria as the basis in part for 
your criticism. 

3. Bring to class examples of the different kinds of logical argument: 
(1) generalization; (2) causal: cause to effect, and effect to cause; 
(3) analogy. Apply tests. 

4. Aim to determine the prejudices and mental attitudes in general 
of your classmates on some subject of current interest on which 
there is a difference of opinion. Decide in your own mind how 
many believe as you do on the subject, and how many believe 
some other way. Try to discover one or two of the main reasons 
why a number of the class disagree with you, and aim to under¬ 
stand those reasons as fully as you can. Work out a carefully 
prepared argument for presentation to the class, aimed at those 
who hold opinions different from your own. When you are 
through, get a frank expression from these hearers as to what effect 
your argument had. Do they still think and feel as they did, or 
are they persuaded to your views? 

READINGS 

Speeches 

“Columbus Speech,” by Abraham Lincoln ( Nicolay and Hay). 

“Liverpool Speech,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: IV). 

“Reply to Hayne,” by Daniel Webster (Vol. XI). 

“Capital Punishment,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. II). 

“Speech on Government Ownership,” by Herbert Hoover {O'Neill and 
Riley ). 

“Speech on Government Ownership,” by Alfred E. Smith {O'Neill and 
Riley ). 

References 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XIII. 

Arleigh Boyd Williamson: Speaking in Public (1929), Chap. XIII. 

Frederick Hansen Lund: The Psychology of Belief. (Thesis: Colum¬ 
bia University, 1905.) 

William Trufant Foster: Argumentation and Debating (Revised Edi¬ 
tion, 1917). 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE ENTERTAINMENT SPEECH 

What we really mean by an entertainment speech, as al¬ 
ready explained, is one in which the entertainment feature is 
predominant. Of this type, the after-dinner speech is the one 
conspicuous example. To do this well is something of an 
accomplishment, and really requires special gifts — a vivid 
sense of humor and originality of treatment. All may try it, 
and many will make at least a tolerable success of it. 

Hints for the After-Dinner Speaker, i. Observe the spirit of 
the occasion. The atmosphere which naturally pervades an 
occasion of that kind is one of geniality and good cheer. 1 It is 
not an occasion for argument or for airing one’s prejudices. 
Controversial topics are usually regarded as contrary to the 
spirit of festive occasions. At a banquet celebrating the sea¬ 
son’s victories of a football team, we do not offer adverse crit¬ 
icism of the coach and players. If we have any, we reserve 
it for other times and other places. We avoid anything that 
may sound like a discordant note. 

2. The best after-dinner speeches have a message. While some 
after-dinner speeches are made for mere entertainment, the best 
ones, let it be repeated, have in their composition something 
more than mere humor. The good after-dinner speech will 
have an idea and develop it; and while the development may 
be partly in light vein and humorous, it will be something more 
than that. Wholly humorous speeches are, as a matter of fact, 
not necessarily the most interesting and entertaining. Origi¬ 
nality in thought and style may be more captivating than any 
effort at being funny. If you can combine originality of treat- 

292 


THE ENTERTAINMENT SPEECH 


2 93 

ment and humor, you will probably be a good after-dinner 
speaker. 

3. Careful preparation is necessary . If you expect to make 
a good after-dinner speech, you had better make careful prep¬ 
aration for it, just the same as for any other speech. There 
may be those who can acquit themselves creditably on such 
occasions without much preparation. For the rank and file, 
however, trusting to the inspiration of the moment is too 
hazardous. Careful preparation in advance is the only insur¬ 
ance of comfort and safety. In preparing such a speech, one 
should be careful to reckon with all the factors in the situation: 
the nature of the occasion, the number of speakers, the prob¬ 
able length of the speech, what the other speakers may say, 
and other essential matters. If one can weave one’s own speech 
into a unified plan or pattern with the rest, so much will be 
gained. 

4. Care must be exercised in the selection of forms of support. 
As to forms of support, the most useful are likely to be per¬ 
sonal experiences, concrete examples, the literary quotation, the 
anecdote, and other forms of illustration. If you can offer as 
supports for any point you may choose to develop one good 
example, a literary quotation, and an anecdote, the chances are 
good that your point will “go over.” If these forms of support 
are definitely determined, you may use them as islands, and 
take a chance on swimming between. The amateur, however, 
will do well if he fortifies himself with some practice in swim¬ 
ming between. 

The best humor is that which seems to grow out of the sub¬ 
ject or occasion and is not introduced for its own sake, in con¬ 
nection with something that has nothing to do with the theme. 
This applies to anecdotes as well. They should illustrate points 
that are in some way connected with the subject, and should 
not give the impression of being dragged in for their own sake. 
Be sure that the story is appropriate, does in fact illustrate the 
point you want it to illustrate. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


294 

With some men, humor comes naturally; with others it seems 
too often forced. I recall going with an oriental lecturer to a 
noon luncheon of Shriners, at which he spoke for half an hour. 
He had occasion to refer, in the course of his speech, to a cor¬ 
respondent in China that a leading English newspaper had 
sent over, and took it upon himself to criticize this correspondent 
for his attitude on Chinese problems, and also for his ignorance. 
“Why,” said he, “that man does not know any more about 
China than a lawyer knows about the Bible.” Coming so 
naturally and unexpectedly, the reference threw the audience 
of about three hundred Shriners into convulsions of laughter. 
Later on, in his address, he pleaded for a better understanding 
among races and nations. “When we come to understand each 
other a little better,” he said, “we shall find that the Black is 
not so black as he is painted; the Yellow, not so yellow; and 
White, not quite so white.” That was originality! A good 
message spiced with humor and originality goes to make up a 
good after-dinner speech. While this may not have been 
strictly an after-dinner speech, it had in it many of the elements 
of such an address. 

Of all speeches, the after-dinner speech should be presented 
with the ease and informality of conversation. Thomas Went¬ 
worth Higginson in his “Notes on Speech Making” offers a 
suggestion which should not only start one off in the conversa¬ 
tional mode, but also give to the address an air of spontaneity, 
of being born of the occasion. 

If people are shy and awkward and conscious about their speeches, 
how shall they gain an easy and unconstrained bearing? That is, 
how shall they begin their speeches in that way? — for after the 
beginning, it is not so hard to go on. 

There is one very simple method, — as simple as to swallow a 
mouthful of water slowly to cure one’s hiccough, — and yet one 
which I have seldom known to fail. Suppose the occasion to be a 
public dinner. You have somebody by your side to whom you have 
been talking. To him your manner was undoubtedly natural; and 


THE ENTERTAINMENT SPEECH 


295 

if you can only carry along into your public speech that conver¬ 
sational flavor of your private talk, the battle is gained. How, then, 
to achieve that result? In this easy way: Express to your neighbor 
conversationally the thought, whatever it is, with which you mean to 
begin your public speech. Then, when you rise to speak, say merely 
what will be perfectly true, “I was just saying to the gentleman who 
sits beside me, that” — and then you repeat your remark over again. 
You thus make the last words of your private talk the first words of 
your public address, and the conversational manner is secured. This 
suggestion originated, I believe, with a man of inexhaustible fertility 
in public speech, Rev. E. E. Hale. I have often availed myself of it, 
and have often been thanked by others for suggesting it to them. 

5. Observe the time limit , whatever it is. It is necessary to 
speak of this because it is so much abused. It is not unusual 
for an occasion of that kind to last until late hours in the night 
or early hours in the morning until everybody is tired out, and 
half the audience gone, simply because speakers do not know 
when to stop; or, perhaps more accurately, they do not know 
how to stop. It is of some importance, therefore, to have the 
power and the good sense to stop at the right time. If a time 
limit is set, observe it, and don’t embarrass the chairman by 
making it necessary for him to ask you to end your speech. If 
no time limit is set, gauge the amount of time you may reason¬ 
ably occupy from the number of speakers on the program and 
the lateness of the hour. If in doubt, give the audience the 
benefit of the doubt. 

EXERCISES 

1. Read Beecher’s after-dinner speech, “Merchants and Ministers,” 1 
and hand in a written criticism of it, covering as many points as 
you can. Does it have a definite message? Is the message ap¬ 
propriate? What are the chief sources of humor? Is there 
originality in thought and style? What are the principal forms of 
support? Is the style conversational? Does the speech have the 
effect of spontaneity? Give such other criticisms as you can. 

1 See page 438 of this volume. 


296 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

2. Report on an after-dinner speech you have recently heard, with 
criticism on points of effectiveness and ineffectiveness. 

3. Give an oral or written report on two of the speeches assigned for 
reading at the end of this chapter. Make your criticism orderly, 
and cover as many points as you can. To what extent is humor 
derived from the occasion? To what extent from the originality 
of the speaker? 

4. Prepare to give in class a five-minute after-dinner speech, imagin¬ 
ing an occasion proper for such a speech. Do not depend too much 
on stories. Aim to be humorous without them. 


READINGS 

Speeches 

“The Yankee,” by Irving Bacheller (Vol. I). 

“Liberty under the Law,” by George W. Curtis (Vol. I). 

“The Pilgrims,” by Wendell Phillips {Phillips, Vol. I). 

“The Mormons,” by Charles Farrar Browne (“Artemus Ward”) 
(Vol. XIII). 

“The Bench and the Bar,” by Joseph Choate (Vol. I). 

“A ‘Littery’ Episode,” by Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”) 
(Vol. I). 

“Woman,” by Chauncey M. Depew (Vol. I). 

“The Music of Wagner,” by Robert Ingersoll (Vol. II). 

“Andrew Carnegie — His Methods with His Men,” by Charles M. 
Schwab (Vol. IX). 

References 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “Hints on Speech Making,” Modern 
Eloquence (Third Edition, revised in 1929), Vol. II, pp. xv-xxii. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. XIV. 

James Milton O’Neill and Andrew Thomas Weaver: The Elements of 
Speech (1926), Chap. XXVII. 

Lorenzo Sears: Modern Eloquence (First Edition, 1900), Vol. I, 
pp. xiii-xxxv. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS 

If you have mastered well the principles governing the prep¬ 
aration of the types of speeches already treated, speeches for 
special occasions should not present any great difficulties, ex¬ 
cept such as are met with in the preparation of any speech. 
When we come to analyze the aims of the various occasional 
addresses, we shall find that they are usually of the impressive 
type, and governed by the same rules in regard to organization 
and the choice of speech materials. This is true also of the 
after-dinner speech when it is more than a string of stories and 
a succession of jokes. 

There are many forms of the so-called occasional address. 
The principal ones are the following: (i) the address of welcome; 
(2) the introductory address; (3) the anniversary address; 
(4) the eulogy; (5) the farewell address. 

The Speech of Welcome. There are many occasions for 
speeches of welcome, not so much to individuals as to organiza¬ 
tions. Conventions of all kinds assemble nowadays in large 
cities and small, made up of representatives from large areas, at 
times from the whole country, at other times from the whole 
world. Ordinarily the mayor of the city or some local dignitary 
is called upon to address the gathering and extend the welcome 
of the city. These speeches are usually in a light, humorous 
vein, seldom occupying more than five minutes, consisting of a 
few appropriate pleasantries, and making the delegates feel “at 
home” during their deliberations — and sight-seeing. It is 
something of an art to do this well and handsomely, but it is 
difficult to give very definite rules, as so much depends on the 
occasion and the originality of the speaker. 

297 


298 the art of effective speaking 

Certain it is that an address of welcome is essentially neither 
informative nor argumentative. It must, therefore, be pri¬ 
marily either an impressive or an entertainment speech, and 
that is exactly what it is. Whether one element or the other 
predominates will depend on the speaker and the occasion. 
Very often addresses of welcome are predominantly in a humor¬ 
ous vein; and again they may stress some idea or give expression 
to some sentiments that make them predominantly impressive. 
Probably the best address of welcome is one that is both impres¬ 
sive and entertaining, and uses speech materials to further 
both ends, just as a good after-dinner speech may do. 

To discover the most appropriate sentiments to express, it 
is always in order to question yourself about the occasion and 
particularly about the organization or individual welcomed. 
What is the character of the organization? What does it stand 
for? What outstanding thing has it done? How does it touch 
our lives? What is its program for the future? What is its 
relation to our community? 

From queries like these — and they apply as well to indi¬ 
viduals — a speaker will hit upon some appropriate idea or 
sentiment to develop briefly. The more specific and concrete 
the treatment, the better. We may say that an address of 
welcome should aim to accomplish at least two things: (i) make 
the guest or guests feel at home, and give them assurance that 
the community takes pleasure in entertaining them, and pride 
in having them as guests; (2) strike a note or two of apprecia¬ 
tion of the work being done by the organization and suggest 
concretely how vitally it may affect individuals and the com¬ 
munity. 

Liberal seasoning with humor and gracious sentiment by 
means of personal experiences, literary quotations, anecdotes, 
and other forms of illustration is appropriate and desirable. 

The Introductory Address. Almost anything may be forgiven 
in an introductory speech if it is short enough. The record for 
brevity is very likely held by Shailer Mathews, who, in pre- 


THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS 


299 


senting President Woodrow Wilson on one occasion, said, 
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the President.” Robert Ingersoll, 
however, improved on that slightly by doing without introduc¬ 
tory speeches altogether. He simply walked out on the plat¬ 
form and began to speak. While that may do for one so well 
known as he became in his later years, still an introduction has 
its place for most speakers. Its aim is to establish an intelligent 
and friendly relation between speaker and audience. A speaker 
may have attained considerable distinction — be a member of 
the English parliament, say — and still be virtually unknown 
to an American audience. It is of interest to the audience and 
of advantage to the speaker that his political and other accom¬ 
plishments be briefly surveyed. On an occasion like that, the 
introducer will seize upon the outstanding achievements of the 
speaker and present them with due impressiveness, and at 
the same time with genuine sincerity. The better known the 
speaker, the briefer may be the introductory speech. 

An audience is impatient of long introductory speeches, un¬ 
less they really say something vital and interesting relating to 
the speaker. It is bad form for one who introduces a speaker 
to launch into a speech of his own, no matter how brilliantly it 
may be done. It is also at times unbearably tedious and tiring 
on such occasions to have to listen to a half-dozen or so an¬ 
nouncements, in most of which the audience has no interest. 
The members of the audience are there to hear the speaker, 
and unless there are some weighty reasons to the contrary, 
they should be allowed to hear him promptly and without un¬ 
necessary delay. Two or three minutes, as a rule, should be the 
time limit for an introductory speech. 

The Eulogy. The eulogy, as a rule, is predominantly an 
impressive speech. It may take several forms. It may be a 
relatively short address, in the form of a tribute at the time of 
a man’s death, like Wendell Phillips’ tributes to Lincoln, Garri¬ 
son, Harriet Martineau, and others. These are as fine models 
as we have of this form of address. 


3 °° 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Or the eulogy may be a lengthy discourse occupying an hour 
or more in the delivery. There are two types of this eulogy: 
the selective eulogy, like Phillips’ eulogy of Daniel O’Connell 
and Toussaint L’Ouverture, in which certain character traits 
are chosen and developed, or certain historical movements dealt 
with, in which the subject of the eulogy had a large part; 
and the biographical eulogy, which aims to give the life history 
of a man, and point some moral from this life history. Such 
are usually congressional eulogies, delivered by a colleague when 
a Congressman dies. Of this type also is Edward Everett’s 
eulogy of Washington. 

No matter what form it takes, the eulogy is essentially an 
impressive speech. It may be informative also, but information 
is not the ultimate end. The primary aim of a eulogy is to hold 
up as examples to the living the virtues and accomplishments 
of the dead. The eulogy is a persuasive speech. It does not 
advocate any specific action, but it does aim to set up attitudes 
and action tendencies of a certain kind, so that we shall act in 
accordance with them when the occasion comes. 

Eulogies on occasion are argumentative, although such eulo¬ 
gies are exceptions. Wendell Phillips’ eulogy of Toussaint 
L’Ouverture is of this kind. It was given at a time when the 
antislavery struggle was raging and the worth of the negro much 
discussed. Phillips made his speech both a eulogy and an 
argument for recognizing the worth of the negro race. It is 
one of our greatest eulogies. Read it. 

The Anniversary Address. There are many occasions for the 
anniversary address, and correspondingly many calls for 
speeches to interpret and give freshness of meaning to such 
occasions. You are familiar with the observance of Memorial 
Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Armistice Day, Mothers’ 
Day, Old Settlers’ Day, the birthdays of distinguished men 
like Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others. 
Then there are class reunions and anniversaries. Such occa¬ 
sions are legion and offer much opportunity for speaking. 


THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS 


3 °i 

All such speeches are of the impressive type, and governed 
accordingly as to choice of speech materials and organization. 
They are usually in serious vein and should have a definite 
message. The fact that the people who gather on such occa¬ 
sions are from all stations in life, and form, therefore, a decidedly 
mixed audience, renders it advisable to make such speeches light 
in substance and to intersperse some humor, although the 
occasion is essentially impressive. Personal incidents, general 
and concrete examples, well-selected quotations, a few good 
anecdotes and illustrations, will serve best. An important 
requisite of such a speech is a good message, one that under¬ 
takes to interpret the meaning of the occasion in relation to 
present-day problems. The speech of Jane Addams at the end 
of this chapter is an excellent example of this method of treat¬ 
ment. It has a good message and aims to give significance to 
certain character traits of the great Virginian by suggesting 
how he would react to present-day problems. Lincoln’s 
“Gettysburg Address” derives its power and popularity in no 
small measure from its happy choice of message. 

The Farewell Address. Like other occasional addresses, the 
farewell address is an impressive type of speech. The school 
valedictory address is an example. Occasions every once in a 
while arise in a community when a distinguished citizen moves 
away for one reason or another. He may be a candidate-elect 
for some political office, a minister, a teacher, or some other 
beloved member of the community. A banquet is prepared 
and speeches arranged. 

Speeches on such occasions are usually brief, and while prop- 
erly somewhat sentimental, they will show moderation and 
good taste. They should above all things be genuine. What¬ 
ever is said should come from the heart. Note with what deep 
sincerity and affection Lincoln addresses his Springfield friends 
on his departure for Washington. 

My Friends: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling 
of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these 


302 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, 
and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have 
been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or 
whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than 
that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that 
assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and 
remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope 
that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in 
your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. 

EXERCISES 

i. The following speech was given by Jane Addams, world-famed for 
her work at Hull House, Chicago, at the dinner of the Union 
League Club, Chicago, February 23, 1903. Study it, and then 
either write out, or be prepared to give orally, a criticism of the 
speech, touching the message, the method of treatment, the 
character of the style, and the forms of support. Would concrete 
materials add to the effectiveness of the speech? If so, what ma¬ 
terials would you suggest? Note the careful structure of the 
speech. 

WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY 

We meet together upon these birthdays of our great men, not only 
to review their fives, but to revive and cherish our own patriotism. 
This matter is a difficult task. In the first place, we are prone to 
think that by merely reciting these great deeds we get a reflected 
glory, and that the future is secure to us because the past has been so 
fine. 

In the second place, we are apt to think that we inherit the fine 
qualities of those great men, simply because we have had a common 
descent and are living in the same territory. 

As for the latter, we know full well that the patriotism of common 
descent is the mere patriotism of the clan — the early patriotism of 
the tribe. We know that the possession of a like territory is merely 
an advance upon that, and that both of them are unworthy to be the 
patriotism of a great cosmopolitan nation whose patriotism must be 


THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS 


303 

large enough to obliterate racial distinction and to forget that there 
are such things as surveyor’s lines. Then when we come to the study 
of great men it is easy to think only of their great deeds, and not 
to think enough of their spirit. What is a great man who has made 
his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a 
man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has 
seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have 
his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until 
conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they 
gather about him and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, 
they make a new period in history. 

Let us assume for a moment that if we are going to make this day 
of advantage to us, we will have to take this definition of a great man. 
We will have to appeal to the present as well as to the past. We will 
have to rouse our national conscience as well as our national pride, 
and we will all have to remember that it lies with the young people 
of this nation whether or not it is going to go on to a finish in any 
wise worthy of its beginning. 

If we go back to George Washington, and ask what he would be 
doing were he bearing our burdens now, and facing our problems at 
this moment, we would, of course, have to study his life bit by bit; 
his life as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a simple Virginia planter. 

First, as a soldier. What is it that we admire about the soldier? 
It certainly is not that he goes into battle; what we admire about the 
soldier is that he has the power of losing his own life for the life of a 
larger cause; that he holds his personal suffering of no account; that 
he flings down in the gage of battle his all, and says, “I will stand or 
fall with this cause.” That, it seems to me, is the glorious thing we 
most admire, and if we are going to preserve that same spirit of the 
soldier, we will have to found a similar spirit in the civil life of the 
people, the same pride in civil warfare, the spirit of courage, and 
the spirit of self-surrender which lies back of this. 

If we look out upon our national perspective, do we not see certainly 
one great menace which calls for patriotism? We see all around us a 
spirit of materialism — an undue emphasis put upon material pos¬ 
sessions; an inordinate desire to win wealth; an inordinate fear of 
losing wealth; an inordinate desire to please those who are the pos¬ 
sessors of wealth. Now, let us say, if we feel that this is a menace, 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


3 ° 4 

that with all our power, with all the spirit of a soldier, we will arouse 
high-minded youth of this country against this spirit of materialism. 
We will say to-day that we will not count the opening of markets the 
one great field which our nation is concerned in, but that when our 
flag flies anywhere it shall fly for righteousness as well as for increased 
commercial prosperity; that we will see to it that no sin of commercial 
robbery shall be committed where it floats; that we shall see to it 
that nothing in our commercial history will not bear the most careful 
scrutiny and investigation; that we will restore commercial life, how¬ 
ever complicated, to such honor and simple honesty as George 
Washington expressed in his business dealings. 

Let us take, for a moment, George Washington as a statesman. 
What is it he did, during those days when they were framing a con¬ 
stitution, when they were meeting together night after night, and 
trying to adjust the rights and privileges of every class in the com¬ 
munity? What was it that sustained him during all those days, all 
those weeks, during all those months and years? It was the belief 
that they were founding a nation on the axiom that all men are 
created free and equal. What would George Washington say if he 
found that among us there were causes constantly operating against 
that equality? If he knew that any child which is thrust prematurely 
into industry has no chance in life with children who are preserved 
from that pain and sorrow; if he knew that every insanitary street, 
and every insanitary house, cripples a man so that he has no health 
and no vigor with which to carry on his life labor; if he knew that all 
about us are forces making against skill, making against the best 
manhood and womanhood, what would he say? He would say that if 
the spirit of equality means anything, it means like opportunity, and 
if we once lose like opportunity we lose the only chance we have 
towards equality throughout the nation. 

Let us take George Washington as a citizen. What did he do when 
he retired from office, because he was afraid holding office any longer 
might bring a wrong to himself and harm to his beloved nation? We 
say that he went back to his plantation on the Potomac. What were 
his thoughts during the all too short days that he lived there? He 
thought of many possibilities, but, looking out over his country, did 
he fear that there should rise up a crowd of men who held office, not 
for their country’s good, but for their own good? Would he not have 


THE OCCASIONAL ADDRESS 


305 

foreboded evil if he had known that among us were groups and hordes 
of professional politicians, who, without any blinking or without any 
pretense that they did otherwise, apportioned the spoils of office, 
and considered an independent man as a mere intruder, as a mere 
outsider; if he had seen that the original meaning of office-holding 
and the function of government had become indifferent to us, that 
we were not using our foresight and our conscience in order to find 
out this great wrong which was sapping the foundations of self- 
government? He would tell us that anything which makes for better 
civic service, which makes for a merit system, which makes for fitness 
for office, is the only thing, which will tell against this wrong, and that 
this course is the wisest patriotism. What did he write in his last 
correspondence? He wrote that he felt very unhappy on the subject 
of slavery, that there was, to his mind, a great menace in the holding 
of slaves. We know that he neither bought nor sold slaves himself, 
and that he freed his own slaves in his will. That was a century ago. 
A man who a century ago could do that, would he, do you think, be 
indifferent now to the great questions of social maladjustment which 
we feel all around us? His letters breathe a yearning for a better 
condition for the slaves, as the letters of all great men among us 
breathe a yearning for the better condition of the unskilled and under¬ 
paid. A wise patriotism, which will take hold of these questions by 
careful legal enactment, by constant and vigorous enforcement, be¬ 
cause of the belief that if the meanest man in the republic is deprived 
of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights, 
is the only patriotism by which public-spirited men and women, with 
a thoroughly aroused conscience, can worthily serve this republic. 
Let us say again that the lessons of great men are lost unless they 
reenforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon 
ourselves; that they are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills for¬ 
ward in the direction of their highest ideals. 

2. Report on an occasional address that you have heard recently, 
with criticism as to effectiveness. Be specific. 

3. Prepare an eight- or ten-minute speech on one of the following, in 
the form of selective or biographical eulogy. Aim to select in¬ 
teresting facts in the person’s life and his distinctive character 
traits. 


306 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Woodrow Wilson 
Thomas Jefferson 


Theodore Roosevelt 
Calvin Coolidge 
William Jennings Bryan 
William Lloyd Garrison 


Jane Addams 
Carrie Chapman Catt 
Julia Ward Howe 
Florence Nightingale 
Frances Willard 
Selma Lagerlof 


Some one of your own choice 


4. Make a written report on one of the speeches for reading; touch 
on as many points as possible. 

5. Formulate in a sentence the message of the “Gettysburg Address.” 


READINGS 


Speeches 

“New Critics of Democracy,” by Nicholas Murray Butler ( O’Neill 
and Riley). 

“Abraham Lincoln,” by Henry Watterson (Vol. IX). 

“Dedicating the George F. Baker Foundation,” by Owen D. Young 
( O’Neill and Riley). 

“Toussaint L’Ouverture,” by Wendell Phillips (Vol. XIII). 

“Wendell Phillips,” by Henry Ward Beecher ( Beecher: I). 

“The Glories of Duluth,” by James Proctor Knott (Vol. VIII). 
“Adams and Jefferson,” by Edward Everett (Vol. IX). 

“ Charles Henry Woolbert,” by Andrew T. Weaver ( O’Neill and Riley). 
“The American Scholar,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Vol. VI). 
“James A. Garfield,” by James G. Blaine (Vol. IX). 

“Marcus Aurelius,” by Felix Adler (Vol. VII). 

“First!” by Henry Drummond (Vol. VII). 

“Blaine — The Plumed Knight,” by Robert Ingersoll (Vol. XI). 
“Nominating Alfred E. Smith for the Presidency (1928),” by Frank¬ 
lin D. Roosevelt (1 O’Neill and Riley). 

References 

Lorenzo Sears: “The History of Oratory,” Modern Eloquence (Third 
Edition, revised in 1929), Vol. X, pp. xvii-xxxviii. 

Lorenzo Sears: The Occasional Address. London (1897). 


CHAPTER XVIII 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 

In preceding chapters, many references have been made to 
the problem of holding the attention of an audience during a 
speech. Especially has this been stressed in connection with 
the choice of speech materials. Some writers treat all speech 
materials from the point of view of their attention values. 
“The person who can capture and hold attention, is the person 
who can eSectively influence human behavior,” says H. A. 
Overstreet. 1 It is plain that a speaker must hold the attention 
of his listeners if he wishes to do more than make noise. To 
continue to speak to the members of an audience after they 
have ceased attending to what the speaker is saying is like 
administering medicine to the dead. But should a speaker, in 
choosing his speech materials and planning his speech, center 
his thoughts primarily on what holds attention, or on what will 
drive home truth and accomplish his purpose? That is worth 
considering. 

The question is how best to regard this problem of holding 
attention. Is it not possible that centering on attention as a 
goal in speaking may be a good deal like centering on happiness 
as a goal in life? We all wish to attain happiness, but even if 
we accept a hedonistic interpretation of life and assume that 
men are motivated primarily by considerations of self-interest, 
it is still a question of how best to attain this goal. Do we 
necessarily attain it best by keeping it constantly before us 
and seeking it out? Or is it essentially a by-product of correct 
and purposeful living? Similarly, do we hold attention best 
1 Influencing Human Behavior (1925), p. 11. 

307 


3 o8 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

by keeping the problem constantly before us? Or is attention 
largely the by-product of those speech processes which are 
effective in accomplishing a certain end? Do we use concrete 
examples because they have attention values, or because they 
tend to flood a subject with light? Do we seek the humorous, 
the unusual, the unique, because we want to hold attention, or 
because we want to entertain, or present interesting informa¬ 
tion? I think these questions answer themselves. 

Attention Values Are Not the Primary Test of Speech Ma¬ 
terials. May there not be, as a matter of fact, a very serious 
objection to regarding attention as the primary aim in selecting 
speech materials? Is it not a fact that just as a newspaper 
man develops a “nose for news,” so a person who is much 
before public audiences is likely to develop a “nose” for ma¬ 
terials that are strong in attention values? A lecturer observes, 
for instance, that a good story always grips the crowd, and 
will immediately revive attention when attention lags. Every 
one knows how speakers constantly yield to the temptation of 
telling funny stories and jokes, even if they have not the 
slightest, or at best only the remotest, bearing on the subject 
in hand. They observe that a humorous incident of any kind 
is likely to make the audience prick up its ears. Dramatic 
narrative, too, will hold attention more than ordinarily well, 
as will certain other forms of support. Is it not reasonable to 
suppose that many such lecturers will move along the line of 
least resistance and see to it that their lecture materials will 
hold the crowd whatever else they will not do? Is it not pre¬ 
cisely this that so often happens with lyceum lectures, and in 
the manner suggested? These lectures are interesting, they 
entertain, they are humorous, they hold attention; but in 
point of ideas they are often very thin. A little thought is 
made to go a long way. They may satisfy the groundlings, 
but for the judicious they are skim milk. 

The trouble is that lectures of this order are built around the 
thought of holding the attention of and entertaining lyceum 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


309 

audiences, and they do this very well. As for conveying vital 
and interesting information, or serving as irritants for thought, 
they do not do it. The fact that certain speech materials have 
strong attention values is no guarantee that they have any 
great persuasive value for specific ends. The converse of the 
statement would be much truer; namely, that speech materials 
that have great persuasive force are likely to have good atten¬ 
tion values. 

Glenn Frank voices this view as follows: 

Many lecturers who began their careers with worthy standards have 
permitted the acid of applause to eat the value out of their service. 
One night the lecturer strikes a certain string that vibrates easily; 
thereafter he finds it difficult to avoid striking that string again and 
again not because it gives the note needed, but because there he is 
assured of ready response from his audience. He discovers that the 
anecdote gets response more easily than does analysis; straightway 
he multiplies his anecdotes. He finds that it is easier to storm the 
emotions than to convince the reason; he sets about adding pathos to 
his technic. He sees that an epigram galvanizes the attention of an 
audience; forthwith he peppers his lecture with epigrams, although 
the average epigram is only half true. The dwindling of his audience 
would imperil his income. His audience is to him what the tiger is to 
its trainer; he must become either the master or the victim of its 
moods. Unconsciously he allows the instinct of self-preservation to 
dictate his assertions. His mind becomes a weathercock, nervously 
sensitive to the automatic applause of flattered prejudice. 

Of exactly this type was a certain lecture I recently heard by 
a distinguished woman at a convocation hour. The lecture 
consisted almost wholly of a dramatic narrative of personal 
experiences, done with matchless skill. The speaker occupied 
about fifty minutes. While she spoke, you could have heard 
the proverbial pin drop in any corner of the audience room — 
which, by the way, seats five thousand people. Almost every¬ 
thing was there that we like to have in a lecture; interesting 
(attention-holding) speech materials, charming personality, 


3io 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


pleasing presentation, conversational mode with never a varia¬ 
tion from it, humor — everything except stimulating thought 
moving towards a definite goal. In this respect the speech 
was a disappointment to many persons. It was in fact a 
typical lyceum lecture of the lighter type. 

We have to distinguish between ideas that merely hold the 
attention of an audience for the moment and ideas that tend 
to persist in consciousness, and so greatly influence behavior. 
It is possible to hold the attention of an audience for an hour 
or more without using ideas that are in any significant sense 
determinants of behavior, or in any true sense interesting. 
When William James says, “ What-we-attend-to and what- 
interests-us are synonymous terms,” 1 he means simply that 
what we attend to has enough interest for us to attend to it. 
I may listen to a speech for an hour; and to that extent, and 
to that extent only, need I be interested in it. In any deep or 
significant sense I may not be interested in it at all. I may in 
fact have been bored every minute of the time. Nothing is 
plainer than that we must distinguish between different methods 
of holding attention, and that the only method which can be 
seriously considered is the one that most advances the speech 
end, whatever that may be. It goes without saying that a 
speaker who can rouse in the minds of his listeners ideas that 
grip and motivate, and tend to dominate consciousness, will 
command attention, and by so doing influence conduct. But 
we must distinguish between that method of holding attention 
and the method that merely commands the attention for the 
passing moment, through appeal to fancy, or novelty or humor, 
or some shallow tricks of the declaimer. 

All of which is not to say that the attention-holding power 
of speech materials may not be regarded as a factor in choosing 
them. It goes without saying that any form of support that 
properly serves the specific end of a speech will be all the more 
valuable for being interesting. Of two illustrations serving 
1 Psychology: Briefer Course , p. 48. 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


3H 

much the same end, the one that has the greater attention 
value is the better. A speaker may well scan his materials 
occasionally for their capacity to sustain interest, just as we 
may with advantage occasionally reflect on what manner of 
living holds for us the largest satisfactions; but his primary 
aim will be to accomplish his purpose. 

What Makes a Speech Interesting? It is well enough, how¬ 
ever, to have proper regard for the requirements of attention 
in any speech. To do that right, we must understand some¬ 
thing about the sources of interest in a speech. That which 
interests holds attention. The question is, then, what inter¬ 
ests us? 

The Vital. We are interested, first of all, in those things that 
vitally affect our lives, provided we can be made to see that 
they do so. This matter has been treated in Chapter IX, 
“Motivation: Want Appeal.” The ordinary imagination does 
not operate at very long range; so there are all kinds of ques¬ 
tions that in the long run affect us vitally, but in which we have 
very little interest. Our distance vision is very poor. It took 
us a long time to realize that clothes made in sweatshops might 
carry in them germs that would kill the wearer. Every worth¬ 
while speech on a well-selected subject will touch the listeners’ 
lives somewhere, vitally and concretely. The art of speaking 
is to show where and how. The speaker must furnish the 
audience with vision. 

The struggle for existence is still severe enough so that any 
one who has ambition to succeed must avail himself of all 
possible sources of information and counsel. The business man 
whose chief problem is to promote sales will listen with avidity 
to the publicity specialist. Farmers will crowd a meeting to 
hear an agronomist talk on crop rotation. Ministers will crowd 
to hear an outstanding man in their profession, to catch inspira¬ 
tion from his personality and counsel from his wide experience. 
College students will attend class lectures for four or five years 
to equip themselves properly for their professions. East Indian 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


3 12 

occultists and “personality power” promoters draw large mul¬ 
titudes to hear them because of the specific nostrums they offer 
for the attainment of health and happiness. We are all crea¬ 
tures of self-interest and desire, not of choice but of necessity. 
Human wants are almost infinite in variety, and many of them 
almost insatiable or impossible of satisfaction. 

The successful speaker, therefore, will be a student of human 
wants and of how to satisfy them. A very suggestive study in 
this field is the life of Edward Bok and his long service as 
editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. No one can read Bok’s 
Life without being impressed with his genius in understanding 
sympathetically human wants and desires, and with his skill in 
providing means of satisfying those desires through the pages 
of this popular magazine. Russell H. Conwell’s lecture, “Acres 
of Diamonds,” stresses the idea that success in business de¬ 
pends largely on one’s sensitivity to human wants and resource¬ 
fulness in satisfying them. Whatever promises to satisfy 
fundamental human wants holds the attention. 

The Unusual , the New. Everyday existence must of neces¬ 
sity have in it much of the humdrum and monotonous. The 
quest for something different provides an escape from the drab¬ 
ness of life. We are therefore materially interested in novel 
experiences, in facts that are striking and out of the ordinary. 
People who can afford it go to the ends of the earth to see new 
places and people, new scenery, new art galleries, to hear great 
singers, actors, and artists. For many fashionable folk, life is 
a grand search for the new, the novel, in apparel, architecture, 
house furnishings, amusements, and even friends. To desig¬ 
nate anything as “ordinary” is to damn it to the lowest depths. 
The essence of fashion, whether it be in attire, automobiles, or 
anything else, is not that the new shall be more beautiful than 
what preceded, but something more striking. 

Mention has already been made of the popularity of lectures 
on polar expeditions by men like Stefansson, Byrd, Amundsen. 
Stefansson gave fifteen or more lectures at the University of 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


313 

Minnesota in the course of about five weeks, and all of them 
were well attended — by lecture-ridden students. Such lectures 
are interesting because they offer new and interesting informa¬ 
tion about portions of the globe not accessible to most of us. 
There is about them also the charm of romance. 

When university professors give examinations to students, 
nobody thinks of making news of it. But when students give 
examinations to university professors, as a group of Columbia 
students did recently, every national news association in Amer¬ 
ica laps it up as news of the first water. It is unusual, novel, 
in fact unheard of. 

A good example of the unusual is the following from Senator 
Irvine Lenroot’s speech before the Inland Press Association, 
Chicago, 1923. Senator Lenroot was discoursing on the alert¬ 
ness and resourcefulness of Washington correspondents. 

There was an important conference one evening at the home of 
Senator Lodge attended by about a dozen Senators. When it broke 
up, it was agreed that nothing should be given out to the newspapers 
concerning it. Later in the evening I was called on the ’phone by one 
of the correspondents, who stated that he had been told that there 
was to be nothing given to the Press, and would not ask me to state 
what it was about, but would like to ask me a simple question that 
could be answered by yes or no — and stated it. I saw no possible 
harm in answering, — for standing alone, it could give him no in¬ 
formation, — and I did so. But the next morning there was a very 
complete story of the meeting, and we afterwards found that each 
Senator present had been asked but one question; but no two ques¬ 
tions were alike, and like myself the other Senators had answered, 
and when all the questions and answers were studied together, the 
correspondent had the story. 1 

So a speaker who can present information that is out of the 
ordinary — new discoveries, new inventions, great and unusual 
achievements, thrilling adventures — who can afford a measure 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), p. 40. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


3 T 4 

of relief from the ordinary, the drab and commonplace, will 
get a hearing. Speech materials of this order have great at¬ 
tention values. 

The attention value of the unusual has a number of implica¬ 
tions for the speaker. Unusualness in thought content is no 
more gripping than unusualness or originality in style or mode 
of expression. The speaker who is listened to is the man who 
not only has original ideas, but who can state them in an orig¬ 
inal way. When James Russell Lowell remarked that the 
poorly informed have a tendency to spell “evolution” with an 
initial r , he said something in an unusual way. When Roche¬ 
foucauld coined his famous aphorism, “You can do anything 
with a bayonet except sit on it,” he expressed his thought in a 
manner at once striking and original. This is treated more at 
length in Chapter XI, “The Speaking Style.” 

Observe how the unusualness of the ideas and the manner 
of expressing them grips the attention in the following: 1 

There is a very general tendency to deny that ideal forces have any 
practical power. But there have been several thinkers whose skepti¬ 
cism has an opposite direction. “We cannot,” they say, “attribute 
external reality to the sensations we feel.” We need not wonder that 
this theory has failed to convince the unmetaphysical common sense 
of people that a stone post is merely a stubborn thought, and that the 
bite of a dog is nothing but an acquaintance with a pugnacious, four- 
footed conception. When a man falls down stairs it is not easy to 
convince him that his thought simply tumbles along an inclined series 
of perceptions and comes to a conclusion that breaks his head; least 
of all, can you induce a man to believe that the scolding of his wife is 
nothing but the buzzing of his own waspish thoughts, and her use of 
his purse only the loss of some golden fancies from his memory. We 
are all safe against such idealism as Bishop Berkeley reasoned out so 
logically. Byron’s refutation of it is neat and witty: — 

When Bishop Berkeley says there is no matter, 

It is no matter what Bishop Berkeley says. 

1 Thomas Starr King: “Substance and Show.” 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


315 

Variety. It is a well-known psychological fact that we can¬ 
not attend to any one thing for any length of time. Fix your 
attention on some part of a picture or a page and observe how 
soon the field of vision becomes blurred. Center thought on 
the meaning of a word or phrase, and soon it ceases to have any 
meaning at all. 

A moving object, or an object that is doing something, or even a 
complex object that presents a number of parts to be examined in 
turn, can hold the eyes for some time. But it is almost impossible to 
hold them fixed for any length of time on a simple, motionless, un¬ 
changing object. 

Attention is mobile because it is exploratory; it continually seeks 
something fresh for examination. In the presence of a complex of 
sights, sounds and touch stimuli, it tends to shift every second or two 
from one part of the situation to another. Even if you are lying in 
bed with your eyes closed, the movement of attention still appears 
in the rapid succession of thoughts and images . 1 

This is true not only of thought content, but also of all agents 
of communication such as voice and bodily action. We know 
how deadly is monotony of voice, whether in pitch, force, 
quality, or rate of utterance. Sameness fatigues. So with ac¬ 
tion. A gesture constantly repeated tires and distracts. No 
action, which is sameness, has a similar effect. We do not like 
to listen to a man who stands motionless in the same place all 
the time. We demand variety in voice and action. 

Attention demands variety in speech materials. A speech 
that uses logical argument to the exclusion of other forms of 
support soon exhausts an audience. It is too much of a strain 
on the attention. The mental effort necessary to follow logical 
reasoning is much greater than the effort required for any other 
form of support. This is true especially of persons not used to 
sustained thinking, and very few persons are. It is true for 
all persons to a degree. A closely knit argument will tire any 

1 Woodworth: Psychology (1929), p. 367. 


316 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

audience in half an hour or so, although a good deal depends 
on the presentation. A rapid rate of utterance will hasten the 
loss of attention, as the mental effort required to follow is too 
great; while a slow rate of utterance will retain attention 
longer. Any form of support if used to the exclusion of others, 
or nearly so, will tend to lose attention. Variety of speech 
materials is absolutely necessary. Facts, testimony, reasoning, 
illustrations in the form of metaphor, simile, anecdotes, para¬ 
bles, must all be taken together to make truth palatable and a 
speech interesting. 

By the same token, a speech must have movement. There 
must be change from one point to another. Attention will best 
be sustained when a speech has a definite movement toward a 
definite goal , with many kinds of speech materials, and a pleasing 
variation in voice and bodily action. Variety is the keynote to 
holding attention. 

Humor. Humor is admittedly one of the great sustaining 
pillars of attention. All normal people recognize the value of 
humor in a speech. In fact, a lively sense of humor in a speaker 
is a gift of the gods. If you have a speculative turn of mind, 
you can delve into the problem of the nature of humor; and 
when you have done that, you will discover that no one really 
knows much about it, and that most of what is written on the 
subject is light without illumination. Fortunately, it is not 
necessary to know much about the science of humor to appre¬ 
ciate its importance and value in a speech. 

Humor furnishes largely the entertainment feature in speak¬ 
ing. It is the open sesame to a receptive mood on the part of an 
audience. 

One need be only a casual observer to be impressed with the 
fact that to be amused and entertained is one of the major 
pursuits of life. Even when bankruptcy sits on the ledger of 
many business enterprises, the amusement business flourishes. 
An audience will come to a lecture in part at least on the sup¬ 
position that they will have a good time. Our usual comment 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


317 

is: “We enjoyed the lecture very much,” or “The lecture was 
a bore.” Of course the enjoyable element in a lecture is to be 
interpreted broadly. Humor is only one factor, but it is a 
large one. Whatever interests or grips us is enjoyable, unless 
it is negative, or detrimental to our welfare. 

Virtually all our great popular speakers have had a lively 
sense of humor. Robert Ingersoll was a capital entertainer, 
one of the finest the platform has ever had, and unquestionably 
the biggest drawing card as a speaker. Not that entertainment 
was ever an ultimate end with Ingersoll — never, unless per¬ 
haps on some after-dinner occasions. In all his lectures — and 
he was on the platform for forty years — Ingersoll never was 
known to go out of his way to be funny. He did not have to. 
Humor was bred in him. If Hugh Walpole is right in saying, 
“To those who feel, life is a tragedy: to those who think, life 
is a comedy,” Ingersoll was a thinker, and to him life was to 
a great extent a comedy. He was capable of the most devas¬ 
tating ridicule of which we have record. Beecher said of Wen¬ 
dell Phillips that he never slew an adversary except with a 
sunbeam. Ingersoll wrought the most devastating havoc among 
his adversaries with bubbling humor and ridicule. 

When Beecher was in England pleading the cause of the 
North in 1863, with every audience in part a howling mob, and 
with heavy responsibilities on his shoulders, he was able to 
relieve the tensest moments with flashes of wit and humor. 
“In my own land,” he remarks in his “Glasgow Speech,” “I 
have been the subject of misrepresentation and abuse so long 
that when I did not receive it, I felt as though something was 
wanting in the atmosphere!” (Laughter and applause.) 

Observe the humor and originality of the following from 
Thomas Starr King’s lecture, “Substance and Show”: 

Our conceptions of strength and endurance are so associated with 
visible implements and mechanical arrangements that it is hard to 
divorce them, and yet the stream of electric fire that splits an ash is 
not a ponderable thing, and the way in which the loadstone reaches 


318 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

the ten-pound weight and makes it jump is not perceptible. You 
would think the man had pretty good molars that should gnaw a spike 
like a stick of candy, but a bottle of innocent-looking hydrogen gas 
will chew up a piece of bar-iron as though it were some favorite 
Cavendish; and Mr. Faraday, the great chemist, claims to have 
demonstrated that each drop of water is the sheath of electric force 
sufficient to charge eight hundred thousand Leyden jars. In spite of 
Maine liquor laws, therefore, the most temperate man is a pretty 
hard drinker, for he is compelled to slake his thirst with a condensed 
thunderstorm. The difference in power between a woman’s scolding 
and a woman’s tears is explained now. Chemistry has put it into 
formulas. When a lady scolds, a man has to face only a few puffs of 
articulate carbonic acid, but her weeping is liquid lightning. 

Humor runs through virtually all of Wendell Phillips’ speeches 
and addresses. During the dark days of the antislavery crusade, 
the skies were never so black, the lightning flashes never so 
blinding, but that Phillips could find some humor in the situa¬ 
tion. Even in the “Harper’s Ferry Address,” delivered in Beech¬ 
er’s famous church in Brooklyn while John Brown’s life was 
hanging in the balance, and when Phillips was in one of his 
ugliest moods, he managed to draw peals of laughter from his 
audience more than once. It is proof of the fine composure of 
the man and his serene spirit that humor was always a ready out¬ 
let for even the tensest emotion. Henry Ward Beecher dared 
to use humor even in the pulpit, and was criticized for doing so. 

In one of his lectures to Yale students, Beecher made some 
comment on the use of humor in a sermon. An auditor asked, 
“Is it the proper thing to make an auditor laugh by an illus¬ 
tration?” Beecher replied: 

Never turn aside from a laugh any more than you would a cry. 
Go ahead on your Master’s business, and do it well. And remember 
this, that every faculty in you was placed there by the dear Lord God 
for his service. Never try to raise a laugh for a laugh’s sake, or to 
make men merry as a piece of sensationalism, when you are preaching 
on solemn things. That is allowable at a picnic, but not in a pulpit 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


319 

where you are preaching to men in regard to God and their own 
destiny. But if mirth comes up naturally, do not stifle it; strike that 
chord, and particularly if you want to make an audience cry. If I 
can make them laugh, I do not thank anybody for the next move; 
I will make them cry. Did you ever see a woman carrying a pan of 
milk quite full, and it slops over on one side, that it did not im¬ 
mediately slop over on the other also? 1 

It is significant that all these masters of the platform, who 
exercised powerful influence over their audiences, used humor 
freely in their speeches. It should be remembered that they 
talked mostly to mixed audiences. Not all speech situations 
lend themselves equally well to the use of humor. One must 
have a sense of the divine proprieties. Still, it is probably safe 
to say that the occasions are rare when a little humor is not 
appropriate. A very popular lecturer of the day on the subject 
of art enlivens all his speeches with a liberal sprinkling of humor. 
Even in the deliberative assembly humor has a distinct place, 
as evidenced by the best traditions of English and American 
parliamentary eloquence. 

The Concrete. The concrete has some distinct advantages in 
relation to attention. The first is that it is easy to understand 
and so economizes the mental effort in following a speech. So 
pronounced is this that, in comparison with involved abstrac¬ 
tions, the concrete, we often say, rests attention. Recently I 
heard a speaker open a lecture on “American Education” by 
reading a book review that he had written. The review proved 
fatiguingly abstract and uninteresting, and it is safe to say 
that when the speaker came to the end of it — in about fifteen 
minutes — not one-fourth of the audience was listening to him. 
Most persons think in terms of images, and must receive their 
information in images or pictures. They are not interested in 
the abstract. The concrete furnishes the pictures and affords 
the principal means of making ideas vivid and impressive. It 

1 Henry Ward Beecher: Yale Lectures on Preaching. The Pilgrim Press: 
First Series, p. 178. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


3 2 ° 

is largely through the use of concrete examples and illustrations 
that we liken the new to the old in point of understanding, 
belief, and feeling. 

Another advantage is that the concrete sticks in the memory 
much longer than the abstract. We are influenced in the long 
run by the ideas that persist in consciousness. We are doubt¬ 
less influenced too by ideas that are below the threshold of 
consciousness — subconscious — but not so much, at least not 
so far as overt action is concerned. It is the ideas that are 
remembered and that come to dominate consciousness that are 
the most influential in determining behavior. Therefore, the 
speaker who wishes to influence conduct must learn to be con¬ 
crete, and talk in terms of pictures. Especially is the concrete 
important in rousing the feelings. We have already seen, in 
Chapter XIV, “The Impressive Speech,” that only the con¬ 
crete has much effect on the emotions. 

It is possible to overestimate the inherent interest value of 
the concrete. A speaker may be concrete and be an intolerable 
bore, although he is not likely to be. All depends on what the 
concreteness is about. One may recount personal experiences, 
tell stories, and give examples, and not hold the attention of his 
audience. The supreme value of the concrete is in making 
clear, vivid, and impressive ideas in which the audience is pre¬ 
sumed to have an interest. The unusual, on the other hand, 
has an inherent interest value. 

Attention has already been called to the startlingly large 
element of concreteness to be found in our great speeches. 
Most of them have about enough framework of general ideas 
to hold the supporting examples and illustrations in place. 
Men who are much before audiences learn more about the 
psychology of attention through experience than they could 
from textbooks. The best way to understand the significance 
of the concrete in speaking is to become thoroughly familiar 
with the methods of men who know. Their names should be 
familiar to you by this time. 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


321 


Curiosity and Attention. Mental curiosity, some writers tell 
us, is at the bottom of much of our desire for education. It is 
certain that we often go to hear a speech largely out of curiosity. 
If the speaker is well known, we are curious to see and hear 
him and perhaps meet him. We are motivated powerfully 
also by a desire to know what he has to say. Will he give us 
some new ideas? Will he make new use of old materials, as 
Lincoln did in his “ Cooper Union Speech ” ? Will he prove to be 
a real explorer in the realm of thought? A cultivated audience 
expects that. A mixed audience does not care for so much of 
the new. In either instance, the new must be judiciously mixed 
with the old to be acceptable. 

It is curiosity in reference to such things that always rivets 
attention on a speaker for the first few minutes. This is his 
opportunity to get started right and make the audience feel 
that he has something for them that will be at least refreshing. 

In the course of a speech a speaker enlists our curiosity in 
several ways besides that of original thinking. Every story or 
anecdote involves curiosity as to the outcome. If the plan of 
the speech is not revealed too fully at the outset, as it should 
not be, in general, the development of it may arouse some 
curiosity. We wonder what will come next. Dramatic narra¬ 
tive of unusual incidents or experiences keeps curiosity on edge. 

For example, a speaker, in talking about “Measuring Life,” 
began by saying that life could not be measured by length of 
time, tlie number of years a man lived, or by his possessions, 
or by his successes, or by his achievements — and we began 
to wonder what it could be measured by. That was finally 
revealed in the last ten minutes of the speech — by growth. 
As the speaker proceeded from one point to another he kept 
us guessing as to what was coming next, and much curiosity 
was aroused as to what his yardstick for measurement was. 

Advertisers frequently play on this motive. At times one 
sees a whole street-car card with only a question mark in the 
middle. One wonders what it is all about. Then a word 



THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


322 

appears, and the more it arouses curiosity the better. Then 
another, and so on until the advertisement is complete. The 
trick draws attention to itself and causes many to see and read 
who otherwise might have paid no attention to it in ordinary 
form. Novelty here — of method — is an element also. 

Curiosity may be aroused by well-selected titles to lectures. 
“ Measuring Life,” “'From Capitalism to Freedom — not via 
Socialism,” “Superstitions of Advanced People,” “The Lost 
Arts,” “Making Democracy Safe for the World,” “To Hell in 
a Pullman,” are examples of titles that may arouse interest 
through curiosity. The last one is perhaps somewhat of the 
sensational type. 

The Speaker and the Occasion as Sources of Attention. A 

distinguished person with a wide reputation will be listened to 
even if his utterances do not assay very high. People will 
listen with breathless attention to a candidate for President, 
almost irrespective of what he has to say. If he has a real 
message for his hearers, in the bargain, then the occasion will 
be one to be remembered. When Lincoln delivered his “ Get¬ 
tysburg Address,” he had an impressive occasion. It is said that 
there was a complete hush among the vast assemblage, which 
continued for some time after the President had finished. That 
was one reason why Lincoln felt his address had not been well 
received. Webster addressed a hundred thousand people at 
the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument. The occasion was 
an impressive one, rich in historic memories, which made it 
extremely favorable for holding the attention of those who 
could have heard. As a matter of fact, aside from two or three 
passages, the speech itself is weak in attention values, as it is 
made up largely of platitudes and is lacking in concrete and in¬ 
teresting materials. The speaker and the occasion probably 
atoned for the deficiencies in the speech. 

The Challenge Technique. We are all interested in a good 
“scrap,” especially if it involves the other fellow. Some there 
are who are not averse to getting into one. Just what the 


WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


323 

genetics of this racial propensity may be, we need not here 
inquire; but we must acknowledge that we have a sinister 
satisfaction in seeing other people, or even animals, in conflict. 
It is likely that interest in scandal derives largely from the fact 
that it always involves conflict. It is well known that clashes of 
some consequence between great personages, great statesmen, 
not to speak of great states, are among the major finds of the 
newspaper office. 

To suggest the operation of this propensity on a low level, 
one need merely call attention to the very respectable crowd 
that a good dog fight will draw. As we ascend the scale, we 
are impressed with the popularity of bull-fight exhibitions in 
Spain and Mexico. At the top we have those spectacular, white- 
light, pugilistic encounters of modern times, known as prize 
fights, which in glamour, dramatic interest, drawing power, and 
profit put in the shade the gladiatorial combats of ancient 
Rome. A debate will draw a crowd where a speech does not. 
The Lincoln-Douglas debates drew several times the crowds 
that the individual campaign speeches of the participants ever 
drew — from 6,000 to 20,000 for each of the seven debates. 
Drama and fiction derive their interest largely from portraying 
people in conflict. 

The speaker may take advantage of this human interest in 
the antagonistic. The preacher will seek to show that his is a 
battle for righteousness against the powers of evil, and that his 
adherents must enlist in the service under his banner. The 
politician will emphasize the forces arraigned against him and 
marshal his constituents against the hosts of error. Lincoln 
took particular delight in Douglas’ references to the divisions 
within his own ranks, and made the most of it with his audi¬ 
ences; while Douglas, of course, sought to pour oil on the 
troubled waters. A dramatic narrative interests usually by 
depicting conflict of forces, whether human or otherwise. It is 
probable that men like Wendell Phillips and Robert Ingersoll 
derived their popularity in part from the fact that each flung 


324 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


a challenge to a powerful social institution; the first to slavery, 
the second to Christianity. There was something bold and 
daring and venturesome in their challenge that captured the 
imagination and drew the crowd. 

There is a challenge to party adherents to buckle on their 
armor for the fray, in the following from Franklin D. Roose¬ 
velt’s speech nominating Alfred E. Smith for President in 1924. 

Four years ago lying opponents said that the country was tired of 
ideals — they waged a campaign based on an appeal to prejudice — 
based on the dragging out of bogies and hobgoblins — the subtle 
encouragement of false fears. America has not lost her faith in ideals 

— idealism is of her very heart’s blood. Tricked once we have been 

— millions of voters are waiting today for the opportunity next 
November to wreak their vengeance on those deceivers — they await 
the opportunity to support a man who will return America to the fold 
of Decency and Ideals from which she has strayed, and who will 
bring the government back to the people. This our candidate will 
do — his is the quality of militant leadership. 1 

The alert speaker will be on his guard to seize opportunities 
to enlist the antagonistic factor in speech-making. It may 
take many forms and involve forces both animate and inanimate. 
The conflict may include the speaker as one of the antagonists, 
or it may be one simply related by the speaker. If the challenge 
is one thrown out by the speaker, it must have the semblance 
of reality. He cannot put up straw men for the mere pleasure 
of knocking them down. 

In Conclusion. This does not pretend to be an exhaustive 
treatment of all the sources of attention. Enough has been 
said to center thought on the problem, and to suggest how it 
may best be dealt with. The attainment of a purpose would 
seem to be the primary aim of a speech. This aim is best 
accomplished by careful search and selection of materials that 
serve the specific end of the speech, whatever that may be. The 

1 Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition, 1930), 
p. 138. 



WHAT HOLDS ATTENTION 


325 

character of those materials and their proper adaptation to 
ends has been dealt with at length in the chapters dealing with 
the different kinds of speeches. If a speaker has ideas that 
grip, illustrations that illumine and impress, language that is 
clear and contains a liberal element of imagery, and a touch of 
originality that gives distinction to the whole, the problem of 
attention will largely take care of itself. 

One may, however, to great advantage, keep an eye on the 
attention values of all speech materials and present them in 
such a way as to win for them the maximum of audience interest. 
The factors that enter into that problem have been briefly 
treated in this chapter. If a speaker can, in addition to what 
has just been suggested, give information that is new or out of 
the ordinary, keep up variety both in matter and in manner, 
arouse mental curiosity with the progress of his speech, leaven 
the whole with humor and genial good nature; and if, finally, 
he has an impressive occasion and perhaps individual prestige 
— the stage is set favorably for holding the interest and atten¬ 
tion of his listeners. 

EXERCISES 

1. Hand in a written criticism of one of the lectures assigned for read¬ 
ing. “The Lost Arts,” “Acres of Diamonds,” and “Substance and 
Show” are all good specimens of popular platform speaking in 
America, although not equally great. Analyze at least one of them 
carefully for sources of interestingness. If you have time, make a 
comparative study of them. The first two lectures mentioned were 
delivered to American audiences for about half a century. Try to 
discover the sources of their remarkable popularity. Consider also 
the message, style, speech materials, use of illustrations, etc. 

2. Comment on a speech you have recently heard which held your 
attention well. Aim to discover reasons in terms of criteria sug¬ 
gested. 

3. Prepare to give a ten-to-fifteen-minute speech with special regard 
for attention values. Do not forget that your first aim will be 
to accomplish your speech purpose, but aim also to make the 
speech interesting and enjoyable. 


326 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


READINGS 

Speeches 

“Memories of the Lyceum,” by James B. Pond (Vol. XIII). 

“The Lost Arts,” by Wendell Phillips (Vol. XIII). 

“Acres of Diamonds,” by Russell H. Con well. 1 
“Substance and Show,” by Thomas Starr King {Mod. El.: I, Vol. V). 
“Big Blunders,” by T. DeWitt Talmage {Mod. El.: I, Vol. VI). 
“Shakespeare,” by Robert Ingersoll (Vol. XIII). 

“The Rescue of Emin Pasha,” by Henry M. Stanley {Mod. El.: I, 
Vol. VI). 

“Dollar Chasing,” by Roe Fulkerson {Lindgren). 

“Speech at Bar Dinner,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes {O’Neill: I). 
“Keynote Speech (1928),” by Claude G. Bowers {O’Neill and Riley). 

References 

Arthur Edward Phillips: Effective Speaking (1908), Chap. VI. 

James Winans: Public Speaking (Revised Edition, 1917), Chaps. 
Ill and X. 

Harry Allen Overstreet: Influencing Human Behavior (1925), 
Chap. VI. 

William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager: Principles of 
Effective Speaking (Revised Edition, 1930), Chap. V. 

1 This speech appears on page 379 of this volume. 


CHAPTER XIX 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 

All time and money spent in training the voice and body is an invest¬ 
ment that pays a larger interest than any other. — William E. Gladstone 

Tradition has it that some one once asked Demosthenes, the 
greatest of Greek orators, “What is the first requisite of good 
speaking?” and the famed orator replied, “Action!” “What 
is the second requisite?” the questioner continued, and the 
answer was, “Action!” “What is the third requisite?” And 
still the answer was “Action!” 

A Free, Unfettered Personality. What did Demosthenes 
mean? Obviously that no one can become a successful speaker 
who merely utters words with his organs of speech. What we 
all like to see in a speaker is a free, unfettered personality, 
completely forgetful of self and completely dominated by the 
message to be delivered or the purpose to be attained. Emer¬ 
son’s definition of an orator is in point here: “a man drunk 
with an idea.” Not only should a speaker have a firm grip on 
his subject; the subject should have a firm grip on the speaker. 
When a man can surrender himself completely to the message 
in hand, and devote all his powers to the attainment of his 
purpose, bodily activity will largely take care of itself. This 
does not mean that gestures and bodily movements are neces¬ 
sarily graceful or quite equal to giving adequate expression to 
the thought and feeling, but it does mean that the whole per¬ 
sonality is speaking, which in point of action is the great 
desideratum. 

The best way to appreciate the importance of bodily activity 
in speaking is to observe a person on the platform who merely 

327 



328 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

utters words, stands firmly fixed to the floor like a marble 
statue, with face blank, and with no gestures of any kind. It 
will be found that a monotonous voice and a total lack of 
variety in emphasis usually go with that kind of speaking. 
Most of us are only too familiar with such deadly performance. 
Then, on the other hand, observe a speaker who is animated 
from head to foot, who moves about the floor from time to 
time, and always with a purpose, who uses appropriate gestures 
to reinforce expression of thought and feeling, and who enlists 
his whole personality in the speaking process. How much more 
effective is such presentation, and how much more pleasing to 
the listeners. 

What bodily activities mean in a play, for instance, was 
made impressive by the success of the silent movies. Here no 
one said anything that could be heard. We did get a few 
captions or headlines to indicate the progress of the play. 
Aside from that, all we got came through the eye. What we 
see is apparently of much more consequence than what we hear 
even in spoken drama. Thus we usually say, “Let us go and 
see the play.” We saw Irving in Shylock, Sothern in Hamlet , 
Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle. This is eloquent testimony, 
in the broad sense, as to how valuable are appeals to the eye, 
and how important it is that action and gestures shall express 
adequately and correctly what we are trying to say. 

One need only observe any ordinarily animated conversation 
to be impressed with the part action plays in speaking. We 
shall find that all bodily agents of expression are alert and in 
action — head, eyes, arms, hands, fingers. It is only on the 
public platform that persons stand like Egyptian mummies 
wrapped in linen, without moving a muscle or a joint, except 
such as are absolutely necessary to mumble the words. To 
overcome bodily inertia, caused in part by nervous tension and 
in part by not knowing what to do, and to free the body for 
animated and effective expression, is a very important part of 
training in any beginning course in speech. 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 329 

Lack of action is a common fault in speaking. In class speaking 
as a rule, and even in speech contests, students exhibit only a 
fraction of the radiating power they possess. The reason is 
that no one has revealed to them their possibilities, by catching 
a vision of what they can do and holding it before them. They 
speak mostly without action, with only a faint consciousness 
of a listening audience. Only on rare occasions does the spirit 
surge and seek to find a free and untrammeled outlet. 

Recently I had occasion to hear a regional declamatory con¬ 
test, with three groups competing in oratorical, dramatic, and 
humorous selections. Four boys appeared in oratorical selec¬ 
tions in work that did not rise above the level of mediocrity. 
No selection received anything approaching adequate expres¬ 
sion. Gestures were few, and physical reinforcement of any 
kind largely absent. 

In the humorous division, one boy competed with three girls. 
The work here was of a much higher order, and action was 
conspicuous. All contestants appeared to be animated from 
toe to crown, all bodily agents finding the freest expression. 
Especially was this true of the boy, who impersonated a num¬ 
ber of Chautauqua performers, including a Congressman. The 
manner of utterance was of a kind to give one pause. He 
absolutely dominated the situation, with a profuseness of action 
appropriate to the sentiments uttered, and so held the audience 
spellbound. The thought which impressed one at the time was 
that if this boy had delivered one of the oratorical selections, 
he probably would have done much the same as the other boys 
did — utterly failed to give any adequate expression to it. He 
would have failed there to realize his powers and to have had 
revealed to him what voice and action and a truly animated 
personality can do. In an oratorical selection he doubtless 
would have used fewer gestures, and properly so; but if he 
had shown the same alertness and freedom on the floor, and a 
personality pervaded with a message and keenly responsive to 
the thought and feeling uttered, as he did in mimicking the 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


330 

Congressman, the effect would have been nothing short of elec¬ 
trical, compared with what the others did. 

The supreme importance of action and animation holds, of 
course, for speech-making as well as for declamations. 

A speech is judged by its immediate effect. We should always 
remember that a speech or a debate is to be judged by the 
effect it makes on an audience, and only by that effect. A 
speech is made to be heard, not read. That being true, what 
boots it to have prepared a good speech or a good debate if it 
is so presented that every idea in it is either buried or mas¬ 
sacred in the process? Henry Ward Beecher, having in mind 
the manner in which discourses are presented in the pulpit, 
used to say that sermons were the “funerals of great subjects.” 
The only things that count in speaking are the ideas and feelings 
that find a vivid and definite response in the audience. Every¬ 
thing else in the speech is dead matter. Carefully composed 
speeches may easily become the funeral of great subjects if little 
or no attention is given to the manner of presentation. 

Recently a girl won an oratorical contest at a Midwest uni¬ 
versity. It was the consensus of several teachers of speech in 
the audience that the speech was a weak one, but the fair con¬ 
testant had a presentation that was superb. Alert, animated, 
aggressive — her actions spoke so loud that you hardly heard 
what she said. Later, in a contest with several Midwest uni¬ 
versities competing and with heads of speech departments as 
judges, she won first place again. 

Posture. By posture, we mean the position which a speaker 
takes on the platform. It has reference not only to the feet, 
but also to the hands and arms when in repose or not engaged 
in gestures, to the legs, head, and body in general. There are 
many ways of taking a position on the floor — especially a 
poor one. One may slouch forward, with shoulders stooped, 
lean limply on the speaker’s desk with one hand and arm, stick 
the other hand in the pocket and begin to jingle coins that may 
be heard all over the room, cross one’s legs, look out of the 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 331 

window or up at the ceiling, and begin to speak. This does 
not overdraw many a picture that one sees on the platform. 

In describing a correct or an effective position on the plat¬ 
form, one must not become too dogmatic or rigid in one’s 
rules. Since many beginning students feel a real problem in 
how to comport themselves on the floor, a few suggestions may 
be given. It is not necessary that the feet shall be exactly six 
inches apart and that the heel of the left foot shall point directly 
at the instep of the right, at an angle slightly acute, as the older 
texts used to have it, although that is not at all a bad position. 
The feet should not be too far apart, nor too close. Perhaps 
four to six inches will be found the proper distance for most 
persons. The so-called military position, in which the heels 
come together at an acute angle, should be avoided, for it is 
one of inferiority and stiffness. Neither should the feet parallel 
each other, although they may approach that position. Any 
one with a little practice can discover what for him or her is a 
comfortable and graceful standing position on the platform. 

As for the weight of the body, a good way to discover how it 
is best distributed is to do some experimenting. You will 
probably find that in animated speaking, as all speaking should 
be, the weight will shift more or less from one foot to the other, 
and from the balls of the feet to the heels. The weight will be, 
as a rule, much more on one foot than on the other, and much 
more on the balls of the feet than on the heels. The weight 
will very likely be on the right foot more than on the left, for 
the very same reason that we gesture more with the right hand 
than with the left. We are right-footed as well as right-handed, 
most of us. An alert and animated speaking position will find 
the weight largely on the ball of one foot, with the other serving 
as auxiliary support. In a more relaxed position, the weight 
will likely shift more to the heels. There will be frequent changes 
in position if a speaker adopts an aggressive attitude in delivery 
and is bent on accomplishing something with his audience. 

The general bodily position, at the outset at least, will be one 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


332 

of fulness of stature, with chest well forward, shoulders straight, 
and head erect. The speaker will look at his audience and not 
through a window, unless he is willing to lose the confidence of 
his listeners. He will not be in too much of a hurry to begin to 
speak, but will wait until quiet has settled over the audience 
room. As he proceeds, his posture will vary, for variety of pos¬ 
ture, as of other behavior, helps to give life to delivery. When 
he has something of particular interest to convey to his audience, 
or in his more dramatic moments, he will likely bend forward, 
using gestures that are appropriate. When a speaker warms 
up, he need not bother much about his posture, although grace 
and ease and power should be sought at all times. 

Gestures. By action we mean total bodily activity in speak¬ 
ing — the totality of the appeal to the eye. By gestures we 
mean essentially the movements of arms, hands, head, and 
shoulders, as well as facial expression. 

There are no set rules for gestures, although there are a few 
guiding principles. Much may be left to the speaker’s indi¬ 
viduality. It may be safely said that the plane or level of ges¬ 
tures corresponds roughly to the plane or level of the ideas and 
sentiments expressed. For example, a speaker seeking to give 
expression to lofty sentiments and ideals, having to do with 
what is just, right, noble, or holy, would probably gesture in a 
high plane and in an ascending direction. If, on the other hand, 
he wished to give expression to thought or feeling of a low 
order, suggesting the vile, the base, the contemptible or degrad¬ 
ing, he would very likely gesture on a low plane and in a de¬ 
scending direction. Matters of fact, of everyday life, of history 
or science, he would probably place on a medium plane. This 
holds true either for one hand or for both hands used together. 

Again, the principle of gravitation applies to gestures. A 
speaker who wished to suggest something light, airy, ethereal, 
would probably do so with an upward movement of the hands 
and arms; if he wished to suggest something weighty or pon¬ 
derous, he would use a downward gesture. 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 333 

We speak of symmetry in gestures and position on the floor. 
If you make a gesture, for example, with your right arm ex¬ 
tended toward the side, the tendency is to move the body in the 
direction of the gesture. Instead, the body should move slightly 
in the opposite direction, so as to preserve symmetry in relation 
to the center of gravity. Otherwise, the position on the floor 
seems unsteady, and too much on one side. 

So, too, gestures vary in regard to the direction outward from 
the body. We may gesture directly in front of the shoulder, 
or toward the side, approaching an angle of 90°, or anywhere in 
between. Thoughts or objects present in time or space, those 
that are close to us and to the audience, we are likely to gesture 
in a forward direction; those remote in time or space, toward 
the side; and those neither very close nor very remote, in a 
direction somewhere between the two. Side gestures with both 
arms extended suggest, among other things, large bodies or vast 
expanses. 

Gestures directly in front of the body should be avoided. 
The right hand should be used to gesture on the right, and the 
left hand to gesture on the left. Cultivate the use of both hands , 
the left as well as the right. It is very seldom that we have 
occasion to gesture with the hands in front of the body. There 
are exceptions, as in the case of an attitude of devotion or 
prayer, or of dramatic gestures. But for ordinary speaking the 
rule holds. 

In gesturing with either hand, use the hand as a whole, and 
be sure to vitalize it to the finger tips. A limp hand expresses 
nothing but limpness. Avoid it. Avoid, also, all contortions 
of the hand — as, for instance, keeping the thumb and two 
first fingers open, and the other two closed. While the hand 
should not be limp, neither should it be stiff, with fingers 
straight out and close together. Cultivate a graceful hand ges¬ 
ture. You can determine what a graceful hand gesture is by 
practice, especially practice under guidance from your instructor. 

All gestures of the hands and arms should proceed from the 


334 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


shoulder as a pivot, rather than from the elbow. A gesture 
from the elbow only is awkward, as you can readily see by try¬ 
ing it out. The elbow joint will be used more or less, but only 
in connection with movement from the shoulder. 

It is customary to speak of a gesture as having three parts 
or movements: preparation, execution, and devitalization. 
This, of course, is not intended to imply that a gesture is de¬ 
liberate. Gestures, as a rule, are unconscious, and in all public 
performances ought to be. By executing a gesture, especially 
of the emphatic type, we mean that the hand and arm make 
a decided movement on the emphatic word or phrase. Without 
such a movement or stroke, the gesture may have no meaning. 
Before that can be done, the hand is unconsciously brought 
into readiness to do it. When a gesture has been executed, the 
hand and arm drop “dead” to the side, unless they become 
engaged in another gesture. 

You will observe, also, that in a graceful gesture of the arm 
and hand, the hand is likely to move in something approaching 
an arc of a circle rather than in a straight line. A movement of 
the hand in a straight line from the side of the body does not 
look right and does not give the most effective gesture. A 
little practice in all these aspects of gesturing will reveal to 
you what is reasonably graceful and correct, and what is awk¬ 
ward and wrong. 

There are a few positions of the hand that may be noted to 
advantage; that is, positions which the hand may take when 
the gesture is executed. Ordinarily the hand assumes a fixed 
position for only a moment, either moving into another gesture, 
or else dropping to the side. 

i. The Hand Supine. This means that the hand is in a 
plane that may approach the horizontal, with palm up. As a 
matter of fact, the so-called hand supine, instead of being hori¬ 
zontal or nearly so, will on most occasions be more nearly at 
an angle of about 45 0 with the horizontal. You can easily 
test this out. This is the gesture of presentation, and, in speak- 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 335 

ing, is probably the most common of all gestures. We use it 
to present ideas that have our approval — accepted truth. 
“This is our view.” “I present this for your consideration.” 
“It was an interesting occasion.” 

2. The Hand Prone. The hand prone, palm down and at 
an angle, denies, suppresses, disapproves; it expresses dislike, 
disgust — negative attitudes. “I disagree with you.” “Let 
us keep this quiet.” “Let us have done with all such non¬ 
sense!” In proportion as the negative feeling is intense, you 
will find that the hand will assume a position that approaches 
the vertical with palm toward the audience. This position of the 
hand not only denies and disapproves, but it does so vigorously 
and intensely. It is a gesture of unqualified rejection. “I 
scorn your offer!” “Away with your hirelings!” 

3. The Hand with Index Finger Prominent. This gesture 
may vary somewhat, and may take two fairly definite forms. 
If the hand is prone and the index finger only moderately 
prominent, it is essentially a descriptive gesture, used to point 
out an object, a person, or a scene. It is used much in drawing 
vivid pictures. If the index finger is firm and pointed straight 
ahead, and the others closed more or less tightly, it becomes 
essentially an intellectual gesture, used to rivet attention to a 
point or fact. When directed at a person, it becomes a gesture 
of accusation. “I want you to be sure to get this.” “Did you 
notice the admission that my opponent made?” “I accuse 
you of unfair tactics.” “You are a coward!” 

4. The Clenched Fist. When we use the clenched fist, as we 
may often do with propriety, it suggests that we are expressing 
ideas that are charged with deep emotion, usually of the more 
or less violent kind. The clenched fist expresses defiance, con¬ 
tempt, righteous indignation. It expresses moral certainty and 
deep conviction of any kind. “I scorn ridicule.” “I defy 
accusation. Here I stand. Let them come forth!” “It is 
my sincere belief.” “I would not for this right hand of mine. 
“May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” 


336 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Gestures should he practiced , preferably before a mirror. You 
will never learn to gesture if you do not try to gesture, any 
more than you will ever learn to swim if you do not try to swim. 
Graceful and appropriate gestures do not just happen. They 
come only as a result of practice, and all practice is mechanical 
at first. You will know, if you ever play tennis, how simple 
and easy it seems to swing the racquet just right — until you 
come to try it! So with gestures. Your first attempts will be 
awkward and mechanical. You will look like a wooden Indian. 
But you will soon get over the awkward stage, and when you 
do, you will feel a new source of power that you may not have 
dreamed you had. 

Movement. Movement refers to changes in position on the 
floor. Every movement which the speaker makes carries some 
meaning. If the movement is an aimless one, it may simply 
detract attention from the speech and serve no good purpose. 
If it is made to serve the speaker’s end, then it becomes a pos¬ 
itive factor in purposeful speaking. 

There are several ways in which movement on the floor may 
serve the speaker’s purpose. We should remember that while a 
writer may indicate transitions and progress in the thought 
by paragraphs, sections, and chapters, the speaker has no such 
devices at his disposal. One way a speaker may suggest tran¬ 
sition in the thought is by changing his position on the floor. 
Some kind of movement on the floor, accompanied by a pause, 
is a very common way of suggesting to the audience the end 
of one line of thought and the beginning of another. The con¬ 
struction of the speech may serve the same purpose. It may 
be said with some emphasis that youthful speakers are inclined 
to neglect all methods for suggesting to their listeners transition 
and progress in their thought. A speech should “march,” says 
H. A. Overstreet, and that is a picturesque way to put it. One 
way to make a speech march is to use appropriate movements 
at the proper time on the floor. Movement on the floor may 
be made to suggest movement in the speech toward a goal. 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 337 

A speaker may also emphasize a point of importance by a 
step or two forward. This is in fact a common form of empha¬ 
sis. I recall Robert Ingersoll, when he wanted to drive home 
some favorite point of his; he would take several steps forward 
to the very front of the stage and deliver himself of what he 
wanted to say. This movement forward, with other appro¬ 
priate forms of emphasis, made the thought outstanding for 
the audience. 

Every movement on the floor will carry some meaning. The 
significant thing is to have it carry the kind of meaning that we 
want it to carry and help us accomplish our purpose. 

There is no doubt room for much variety and individuality in 
behavior here. A great deal depends on the speaker and the 
occasion. Some speakers will “use the stage,” as they say in 
dramatics, extensively and be effective; others will use it very 
little and be almost equally effective. I recall a convocation 
speaker who moved back and forth — slowly, be it said — over a 
distance of at least forty or fifty feet on the platform and still 
did not offend with his movements. He was an unusually en¬ 
gaging speaker, free from all inhibitions so far as one could ob¬ 
serve, and used gestures profusely. A Catholic priest of tall 
stature stood on the left of the desk with his right hand resting 
on it, and with virtually no variation from that position during 
an hour’s lecture. He was effective, too, but lack of variety in 
movement and gesture probably detracted somewhat from his 
effectiveness. A distinguished woman speaker stood on the right 
of the desk, with left arm and hand resting on it, and held an 
audience of 5000 students spellbound for fifty minutes, with 
hardly a variation from that position. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver 
of Cleveland, standing behind the desk, consistently, for about 
the same length of time, captivated his audience with a presen¬ 
tation that left very little to be desired. 

There are no broad rules that can be laid down and made to 
apply to all people. For most speakers the golden mean will 
probably serve best; that is, an occasional change of position. 


33B THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

The gentleman who walked about the floor for long distances 
did not gain anything by it. Neither did he lose much by it; 
but only persons with complete abandon on the stage can do 
that. The presentation of the woman speaker, as well as that 
of the Catholic priest, was, for me at least, slightly marred by 
lack of movement and monotony of position. Still, both were 
effective. Speakers who walk much and speak slowly are likely 
to inflict considerable suffering on their listeners. Common 
sense must rule. Large audiences will probably inspire more 
movement than small ones; informal occasions more than formal 
ones. Imaginative and dramatic speakers will, as a rule, use 
much more stage than those of the more intellectual and ab¬ 
stract type. Movement on the floor, like gestures, will be, or at 
least become, largely unconscious. In the beginning, practice 
under guidance is helpful. 

Mannerisms on the Floor. It is a broad principle, but one 
worth remembering, that whatever mannerisms on the platform 
call attention to themselves detract just that much attention 
from the thought, and so should be avoided. The outlandish 
things that one may do on the platform to distract attention 
are legion, and only a few specific warnings can be given. 

The highest platform art is so to comport oneself as to leave 
manner of utterance in the background and give to one’s message or 
purpose at all times the center of attention. 

Avoid monotony in any kind of action — in movement, ges¬ 
ture, or posture. The speaker who paces the floor, back and 
forth, like a lion in a cage, will soon have every person in the 
audience watching his gait and engaging in a walking match 
with him. This gets very tiresome to the audience, for the rea¬ 
son that every person in the room tends to do the very things 
that the speaker does. You have observed that when you watch 
a football game, you frequently find yourself occupied, uncon¬ 
sciously, in doing incipiently the very things the players are 
doing, and going through much the same muscular movements. 
If the team is pushing their opponents toward the goal on the 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 339 

right, the chances are that you are pushing the person next to 
you in the same direction. If we see an accident even at a dis¬ 
tance, we jerk back, as if to avoid it. Watching a foot race, we 
speed up our muscles with the runners. To understand this 
empathic tendency to action is of some importance to a speaker, 
for it makes clear why all action not related to giving your 
thoughts effective expression tends to distract attention and tire 
an audience. All such action should be avoided. 

Just as it is bad to move about too much, so it is also bad not 
to move about at all. To stand in the same place and in the 
same position all the time is tiresome for a speaker, and soon 
gets tiresome for the audience. No speaker does it who feels 
free to do as he pleases on the floor. Monotony in negative 
action — that is, no action at all — may be almost as bad as 
monotony in positive action. 

Monotony in gesture should be avoided as well as monotony in 
no gesture. To “punch” the air constantly with the right hand 
— or left, for that matter — tends to drive an audience dis¬ 
tracted, for reasons already given. To emphasize constantly 
with vertical hand — meat-axe gesture — has the same effect. 
So with any other gesture: it gets tiresome if overdone. All 
such action tends to direct attention to the behavior of the 
speaker and away from what he is saying. Not to gesture at all 
is equally bad. What serves our purpose best is variety and 
moderation. 

All action should be purposeful; let us remember that. The 
whole body, though not tense, should be attuned to the ac¬ 
complishment of an aim. All movements that do not contribute 
to that end, or that hinder it, should be sedulously avoided. 
Holding the hands behind the back is not against the law, but if 
done for any length of time, it limits a speaker. Thrusting one 
hand into a pocket is not a felony, but the hand is useless or 
worse while there. Running one’s fingers through one’s hair 
has no persuasive power, and may annoy an audience if per¬ 
sisted in. Leaning against a desk too much, crossing one’s legs 


340 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


in a standing positon, holding a pencil in one hand, jingling 
money in one’s pocket, are so many things to be avoided. 

Vocalizing when not speaking is a habit many platform 
speakers have. “Now — er — I wish to say something — er — 
about — er —” etc. Avoid it. Almost any one may be caught 
doing it occasionally, but if carried to an extreme it may be¬ 
come an intolerable nuisance. 

If you have difficulty in observing these directions, it may 
comfort you to know that you may be a successful speaker even 
if you do not follow them exactly. One of the most engaging 
speakers on the American platform today begins his speech by 
sticking both hands into his pockets, and he keeps them there 
most of the time until he is through speaking. Of course, he is a 
good speaker in spite of this mannerism, not because of it. 
Lincoln was awkward on the platform, and divided his weight 
about equally between both feet. He was effective not because 
of that habit, but in spite of it. Your speaking will gain in effec¬ 
tiveness by graceful and appropriate action, but you can become 
a good speaker without all the graces. 


EXERCISES 

1. Take a comfortable and graceful position on the floor. Observe 
the position of your feet and your general bodily posture. Practice 
this in your study. In the classroom, let this be done under 
guidance of your instructor. 

2. Aim to use appropriate gestures with the following utterances. 
Pay particular attention to the hand. 

a. “It looks very much like a cloud.” 

b. “I want to call your attention to this” 

c. “Please be quiet.” 

d. “I will have nothing to do with such a proposal.” 

e. “This vast throng before me.” 

/. “I defy the gentlemen. I defy their whole phalanx. Let them 
come forth.” 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 341 

3. Tell a simple story with appropriate action about “a memorable 
hunting trip,” “an auto accident,” or some similar subject. 

4. Take such a speech as “ Grattan’s Reply” and deliver it with great 
freedom of gesture, yet without exaggeration. 

5. Practice gestures in the upper plane for: 

a. “These are the ideals for which we live and die.” 

b. “We declare before God that our intentions are just.” 

c. “He towers above them all in his fearless integrity.” 

6. Practice gestures in the lower plane for: 

a. “That slinking, cowardly fool.” 

b. “1 abhor such trickery.” 

c. “Just forget such ideas.” 

7. Practice gestures in the middle plane for: 

a. “We must consider both sides.” 

b. “Yes, I agree with you.” 

c. “Now, wait a minute!” 

Practice like this should be a daily exercise for several weeks if 
you want to develop graceful gestures. You can suit gestures to any 
selection of your choice. Do not overlook the fact that every gesture 
involves total bodily action. 

8. Read Herndon’s description of Lincoln before an audience. It is 
presented here, not to be copied altogether, but because it is in¬ 
teresting. The fact that Lincoln, with many handicaps, achieved 
world-wide fame as a speaker — richly deserved, for his speeches 
are among our best models — should prove an inspiration to those 
who aspire to become speakers. 

LINCOLN THE ORATOR1 
By William H. Herndon 

A brief description of Mr. Lincoln’s appearance on the stump and 
of his manner when speaking may not be without interest. When 
standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh 
and ungainly in figure. Aside from the sad, pained look due to 
habitual melancholy, his face had no characteristic or fixed expression. 
He was thin through the chest, and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. 

1 Abraham Lincoln (1890), Vol. II, p. 405. 


342 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

When he arose to address courts, juries, or crowds of people, his body 
inclined forward to a slight degree. At first he was very awkward, 
and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself to his surroundings. He 
struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensi¬ 
tiveness, and these only added to his awkwardness. I have often seen 
and sympathized with Mr. Lincoln during these moments. When he 
began speaking, his voice was shrill, piping, and unpleasant. His 
manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face, wrinkled and dry, his 
oddity of pose, his diffident movements — everything seemed to be 
against him, but only for a short time. After having arisen, he 
generally placed his hands behind him, the back of his left hand in the 
palm of his right, the thumb and fingers of his right hand clasped 
around the left arm at the wrist. For a few moments he played the 
combination of awkwardness, sensitiveness, and diffidence. As he 
proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep in harmony 
with his growing warmth his hands relaxed their grasp and fell to his 
side. Presently he clasped them in front of him, interlocking his 
fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing the other. His speech now re¬ 
quiring more emphatic utterance, his fingers unlocked and his hands 
fell apart. His left arm was thrown behind, the back of his hand 
resting against his body, his right hand seeking his side. By this time 
he had gained sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He 
did not gesticulate as much with his hands as with his head. He used 
the latter frequently, throwing it with vim this way and that. This 
movement was a significant one when he sought to enforce his state¬ 
ment. It sometimes came with a quick jerk, as if throwing off electric 
sparks into combustible material. He never sawed the air nor rent 
space into tatters and rags as some orators do. He never acted for 
stage effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective — in time self- 
possessed and self-reliant. His style was clear, terse, and compact. 
In argument he was logical, demonstrative, and fair. He was careless 
of his dress, and his clothes, instead of fitting neatly as did the 
garments of Douglas on the latter’s well-rounded form, hung loosely 
on his giant frame. As he moved along in his speech he became freer 
and less uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. 
He had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality; and to that ex¬ 
tent he was dignified. He despised glitter, show, set forms, and 
shams. He spoke with effectiveness and to move the judgment as 


ACTION: GESTURE, POSTURE, MOVEMENT 343 

well as the emotions of men. There was a world of meaning and em¬ 
phasis in the long, bony finger of his right hand as he dotted the ideas 
on the minds of his hearers. Sometimes, to express joy or pleasure, 
he would raise both hands at an angle of about fifty degrees, the 
palms upward, as if desirous of embracing the spirit of that which he 
loved. If the sentiment was one of detestation — denunciation of 
slavery, for example — both arms, thrown upward and fists clenched, 
swept through the air, and he expressed an execration that was truly 
sublime. This was one of his most effective gestures, and signified 
most vividly a fixed determination to drag down the object of his 
hatred and trample it in the dust. He always stood squarely on his 
feet, toe even with toe; that is, he never put one foot before the other. 
He neither touched nor leaned on anything for support. He made but 
few changes in his positions and attitudes. He never ranted, never 
walked backward and forward on the platform. To ease his arms he 
frequently caught hold, with his left hand, of the lapel of his coat, 
keeping his thumb upright and leaving his right hand free to gesticu¬ 
late. The designer of the monument recently erected in Chicago has 
happily caught him in just this attitude. As he proceeded with his 
speech the exercise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the tone of 
his voice. It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch, 
and mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His form 
expanded, and, notwithstanding the sunken breast, he rose up a 
splendid and imposing figure. In his defence of the Declaration of 
Independence — his greatest inspiration — he was “tremendous in 
the directness of his utterances; he rose to impassioned eloquence, 
unsurpassed by Patrick Henry, Mirabeau, or Vergniaud, as his soul 
was inspired with the thought of human right and Divine justice.” 
His little gray eyes flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound 
thoughts; and his uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk 
themselves beneath the wave of righteous indignation that came 
sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln the orator. 


CHAPTER XX 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 

The living voice; the greatest force on earth among men. 

— Henry Ward Beecher 

A story is told of Helena Modjeska, the great Polish actress, 
who was a favorite on the American stage for many years. 
Once when she had received repeated calls from her audience, 
feeling that she had to make an acknowledgment and not know¬ 
ing the English language, she resolved to meet the situation 
by simply repeating the Polish alphabet. This she did with such 
beautiful effect that she moved her audience to tears. If the 
incident is correctly reported, as it may very well be, it is 
plain that the voice alone was made to carry the meaning. 

We are all familiar with the quality of voice used in express¬ 
ing joy, grief, anger, affection, and other emotions. What the 
distinguished actress did was to use the vocal quality appro¬ 
priate for expressing a feeling of pathos or sadness, sufficiently 
intense to draw tears from her listeners. This is suggestive 
of how important a part the voice plays in speaking. 

It is not our purpose here to present an exhaustive treatise on 
voice, but only to give a few suggestions to those who need it. 

Requisites of a Good Voice. A pleasing and adequate voice is 
one of the greatest gifts that a speaker can have, just as a thin, 
strident, or raucous voice is an unfortunate handicap. A good 
voice should be firm and strong, with good breath support; 
possess a rich and resonant tone; and, above all things, manifest 
variety in tonal elements. A voice that moves in monotone, 
with unvarying emphasis and rate of speed, carries no distinc¬ 
tion of meaning either in thought or feeling, and soon tires the 

344 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 345 

listener; while a voice of good texture, well modulated, moving 
easily from one pitch to another and from one tonal quality to 
another, and varying the amount of stress in accordance with the 
emphasis desired, is always a delight to hear. 

The majority of young speakers, it may safely be said, do not 
have any great difficulty with their voices. That does not mean, 
however, that voice training will not improve their voices and 
make them very much more efficient instruments. There are, 
moreover, some in every group whose voices, for one reason or 
another, are either disagreeable or wholly inadequate for effec¬ 
tive expression. Since the foundation of a good voice is correct 
and adequate breathing, some attention may properly be given 
to that first. 

Correct Breathing. Breathing is one of those things that we 
are likely to take for granted, like so many other aspects of 
speech. But there is correct breathing and there is incorrect 
breathing. The proper method of breathing is the active 
diaphragmatic method. This means that the proper action of 
the diaphragm and of the abdominal muscles is the basis of 
sound and efficient breathing. The diaphragm, as you may 
know, is the strong partition muscle separating the abdomen 
from the chest. 

When we breathe correctly, there is a movement of expansion 
throughout the whole trunk or torso. The impulse to expand 
will take effect first through the waist and later through the 
chest. If the expansion is principally through the chest, you 
may know that you are breathing incorrectly. The floating ribs 
should move outward and the abdominal wall forward, and there 
should be an expansion both through the waist and through the 
chest. 

When you place your hands flat on the floating ribs at your 
side and take a deep breath, your hands should be pushed out¬ 
ward at the same time that the abdominal wall moves forward. 
A few exercises taken regularly for thirty or sixty days will 
establish this method. There are few things of more vital im- 



346 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

portance to a speaker than adequate breathing. On that de¬ 
pends the motor power for effective expression. 

Not only for voice production but for health is correct breath¬ 
ing important. The technique of efficient and adequate breath¬ 
ing should be taught to every child in the land. In normal 
breathing, only about one-third of the lung capacity is filled. 
This means that many of the lung cells are not vitalized by fresh 
air, except when we take deep breaths, and so become the prey 
for disease-breeding germs, such as that of tuberculosis. It re¬ 
quires conscious effort to fill the lungs to capacity and bring 
fresh air to all their parts. Doctors are pretty well agreed that 
consistent deep breathing of outdoor air several times a day, 
especially in cold weather, is the best preventive of all pulmonary 
ailments, such as colds, coughs, tuberculosis, pneumonia. 

Open and Relaxed Throat. For efficient voice production, the 
most important requisite is an open and relaxed throat. A few 
primitive grunts, ugh, ugh, ugh, with throat open and relaxed, 
will probably call into action the diaphragm, and give the vocal 
column the right start. It is more important to take a few sim¬ 
ple exercises regularly than a large number irregularly. Reg¬ 
ular practice until correct habits are formed is the important 
thing. 


Exercises for Deep Breathing 

1. Put your hands flat against your floating ribs at side. Inhale 
slowly through nose, filling lungs completely, pushing hands out 
and abdominal wall forward. If you do this right, there should be 
a gradual expansion through the waist and chest. Exhale slowly, 
as if you were gently blowing out a candle flame. Repeat five 
times. This exercise should be taken several times a day until correct 
breathing habits are formed. 

2. Same position as in i. Inhale rapidly through nose, filling lungs as 
well as you can. Exhale slowly on ah. See how steady you can 
keep the flow of air. Prolong as much as you can. Repeat several 
times. 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 347 

3. Fill lungs slowly as in 1. Expel breath in a whisper without vocaliz¬ 
ing, on the vowels, a, e, i, 0, u, using aspirate h before vowels; 
e.g., hay, he, hi, ho, who. Throat open and relaxed. Repeat many 
times. 

4. Fill lungs full, breathing through nose. Count 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, etc., 
as far as you can in a whisper; that is, without vocalizing. If you 
can count from 55 to 65 distinctly, you have good breath control. 

5. Fill lungs full. Pant, ha, ha, ha, ha, etc. Observe action of 
diaphragm. 

Vocalizing the Breath. The breath is vocalized in the larynx, 
as it passes over the vocal cords, thus producing sound. The 
tones so formed are enriched and amplified by means of res¬ 
onance. 

Resonance is the mainstay of all tone production, whether 
originated by the vocal cords in the human body or any other 
sound instrument. As examples of resonators, we are familiar 
with the sounding board of the piano, harp, and violin, and with 
the air column in the organ pipe, flute, and other wood instru¬ 
ments. 

If we pluck a taut violin string with no sounding board near, 
the string makes a sound that is hardly audible. On the violin, 
this same string, when the bow is drawn over it, may produce 
a tone that is loud, rich, and clear. The difference is due to 
resonance. Sound, from the point of view of physics, is simply 
air in vibration. The violin is so constructed that the sound 
waves set in motion by the vibrating strings strike the sound¬ 
ing board of the instrument and cause in it harmonious vi¬ 
brations which greatly augment the loudness of the tone. 
The same principle holds for the sounding board of any other 
instrument. The bony structure of the body in some measure 
acts as a sort of sounding board for amplifying vocal sounds. 
This is true especially of the sternum and the head. 

It is well known that a taut string, when plucked, vibrates 
not only as a whole, but also in segments. The principal tone is 
produced by the vibration of the string as a whole, while the 


34B THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

quality of the tone, or timbre , depends largely on the vibrations 
of the segments which produce the overtones. 

A familiar example of resonance to all students of physics is 
that produced by holding a tuning fork over a tube or air 
column of the right length. In the same way, the tones of the 
human voice are amplified through resonance. The chief reso¬ 
nance chambers for the voice are the pharynx — the opening 
extending from the larynx to the bony structure of the head, 
back of the nose — the mouth, the sinuses, and the nose. 

When we speak, the vocal column passes through the pharynx 
and the mouth for most of the sounds. The exception is the 
consonant sound ng. In forming this, the vocal column passes 
largely or entirely through the nasal cavities. In forming the 
sounds m and n , the uvula is partly closed, sending part of the 
breath through the nasal cavities, while the resonance is probably 
largely in the mouth. 

Resonance for different pitches is regulated primarily by the 
length of the column of air in the pharynx and mouth. The 
lower the pitch, the larger the air column necessary to support 
it and produce resonance. The higher the pitch, the shorter the 
air column needed. If you will note what happens in the 
pharynx when you vary the pitch of your tones, you will find 
that for the lower pitches the vibrating air column occupies a 
much larger space; while for the higher pitches, it is much more 
restricted. The adjustments are made unconsciously by us to 
suit the different pitches. 

Nasal twang is caused by allowing part of the air column to 
pass through the nose on sounds that are not at all nasal. The 
nasal tones m, n , and ng are produced by directing either a part 
or all of the air column through the nasal cavities. When we 
form these tones, the soft palate is lowered to meet the back of 
the tongue, thus partly or wholly closing the passage into the 
mouth and directing the air column through the nose. So nasal 
twang, or disagreeable nasality, is caused by allowing a part of 
the air column to go through the nose, on sounds that normally 



VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 349 

should have no nasal sound. It is still true that nasal twang is 
caused by our speaking through the nose; that is, by allowing a 
part of the breath to escape through the nose on sounds not 
normally nasal. This is a defect in vocalization and should be 
remedied. 

In order to detect whether there is noticeable nasal quality in 
your voice, try saying words without nasals, such as the follow¬ 
ing, pinching your nose with thumb and forefinger so as to close 
the nasal passage. 

This is the hour for rehearsal. 

We are pleased with the results. 

Then repeat them with the nasal channels open. There should 
be no difference if your voice is normal. If there is a noticeable 
difference, then you should endeavor to get rid of it, under 
guidance from your instructor. 


Exercises for Voice 

1. Inhale through nose, filling lungs. Exhale slowly, vocalizing prin¬ 
cipal vowel sounds, ah, awe, oh, 00, e, all in the same breath. Do 
this on different pitches. Aim to use lips freely and keep them 
flexible. 

2. Fill lungs as above. Prolong vowel sound ah for several seconds. 
Do this on different pitches. Do the same for the other vowel 
sounds, awe, oh, 00, e. Use lips freely. 

3. Inhale, filling lungs. Take the vowel sounds in turn ah, awe, oh, 
do, e, giving each an upward inflection. Make range of pitch as 
wide as possible. Use words also, what, where, who, why, etc. 
In the same manner give each vowel downward inflection. 

4. Put aspirate h before vowel sounds and vocalize vigorously, all in 
one breath, hay, he, hi, ho, who. Keep throat open and muscles of 
throat relaxed. Start slowly and increase speed. 

5. Put vocal organs in position to say ng. Prolong sound, opening 
and closing mouth as you do so. Observe that vocal column passes 
through nose. 


350 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

6. Count up to io expulsively; that is, with fair degree of vigor. As 
you repeat, gradually increase force. 

7. Count up to 10 explosively; that is, with great vigor, reducing 
time element to a minimum. Repeat, increasing vigor gradually. 

8. Express vowel sounds, a , e , i, 0 , u, expulsively; explosively. 

9. Give proper expression to these sentences. Shout. 

a. Avaunt, and quit my sight! 

b. Ahorse! Ahorse! A kingdom for a horse! 

c. Forward the Light Brigade! 

d. Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on! 


Daily Drill 

Deep breathing — one minute. 

Vocalizing on vowels — two minutes. 

Shouting — two minutes. 

Reading oratorical selections — five minutes — paying particular at¬ 
tention to voice, enunciation, and pronunciation. 

Exercises if properly taken will render a voice rich, mellow, and 
flexible. 

The Vocal Elements. There are four aspects or elements of 
voice to be considered: (1) vocal quality; (2) force; (3) time; 
(4) pitch. Let us look at each of these in turn, briefly. 

1. Vocal Quality. For expressing emotion, vocal quality is 
all-important. Through long racial experience, we have come 
to associate certain qualities of voice with emotional states. 
We know the voice in grief, fear, anger, love, joy, ridicule, the 
sneer, the laugh, the cry. The voice alone expresses these 
different moods and emotions, and many others. The effective 
speaker will be careful to adapt his voice to the varying mental 
states he seeks to express. One has but to observe a great actor 
on the stage to be impressed with the part that the voice plays 
in the expression of emotion. Often it is true that, unless the 
right quality of voice is used to express a specific emotion, the 
words lose their meaning. A student, for instance, will try to 
read a soliloquy of Hamlet’s in an ordinary conversational tone, 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 351 

as if he were giving information about the price of eggs. The 
words sound ridiculous. Only a deep, low-pitched voice and a 
slow rate of utterance will express the despondent mood of 
Hamlet in the following soliloquy. Try it. 

To be, or not to be: that is the question: 

Whether’t is nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; 

No more; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, ’t is a consummation 
Devoutly to be wish’d. 

Again, only a delicate, high-pitched, tender voice will express 
the emotion that Robert Burns felt when he wrote the poem 
“To a Mouse.” 

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, 

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! 

Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi’ bickering brattle! 

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, 

Wi’ murd’ring pattle! 

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion 
Has broken Nature’s social union, 

An’ justifies that ill opinion, 

Which makes thee startle, 

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, 

An’ fellow-mortal! 

There are certain specific vocal qualities, or kinds of voice, 
such as the orotund, the aspirate, the pectoral, the guttural. 
Except the orotund, these are not much used in ordinary plat¬ 
form speaking, but more in acting and impersonation. 

The orotund is a full, well-rounded voice suitable for expressing 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


352 

earnest, vigorous, and dignified thought. Before a large audi¬ 
ence, one will use this voice much of the time. One may practice 
it on any good oratorical selection, or a poem like Byron’s 
“Apostrophe to the Ocean,” especially the second stanza. 1 

The aspirate quality of voice is the one used in a whisper. This 
is really not a quality of voice in the sense of vocalized breath. 
There is no vocalization, strictly speaking. Whispering is sim¬ 
ply breath formed by the organs of articulation into vowel and 
consonant sounds. In speaking, we may use a whisper for em¬ 
phasis by way of contrast, although we do not often do so. A 
whisper also expresses a state of fright or terror. Its most obvi¬ 
ous use in speaking is to express secrecy. 

The pectoral quality is a deep, hollow-sounding voice that is 
associated with chest resonance, although the resonance is 
probably mostly in the pharynx. It is used mostly in imper¬ 
sonation. Those familiar with the Seth Parker hour on the 
radio will recall that the impersonation of Cephas depends al¬ 
most wholly on a pectoral quality of voice. 

The guttural quality of voice is, as its name implies, a throaty 
voice. In ordinary conversation and platform speaking, it is to 
be avoided, although it may occasionally be used to express 
scorn and anger. It is used most in acting and impersonation. 
Try the following with clenched teeth and a guttural voice. 

Many a time and oft 

In the Rialto you have rated me 

About my moneys and my usances: 

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, 

And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 

And all for use of that which is mine own. 

Well then, it now appears you need my help: 

Go to, then; you come to me, and you say 
“ Shylock, we would have moneys: ” you say so; 

1 See page 463 of this volume. 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 353 

You, that did void your rheum upon my beard 
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur, 

Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. 

2. Force . Voice is air or breath in vibration. The vibrations 
are set in motion by the vocal cords when air is pumped through 
the larynx by the breathing mechanism. Vocal force , in terms 
of physics, has to do with the amplitude and frequency of these 
vibrations. The greater the amplitude, or the distance through 
which a string vibrates, and the greater the frequency of the 
vibrations, the greater the intensity of the tone. Vocal force, 
therefore, depends largely on the pressure exerted by the breath¬ 
ing muscles on the air column as it is forced through the larynx, 
since this determines the amplitude of the vibrations. Volume 
of voice is a term used somewhat loosely to indicate the amount 
of breath that passes through the larynx. It will depend on the 
size of the opening in the larynx through which the air column 
passes and the amount of pressure exerted on it. Volume will 
vary somewhat directly with the lowness of pitch. That is, the 
lower the pitch, the greater may be the volume. Volume of 
voice is usually associated with low pitch. 

We must be on our guard against thinking that the use of an 
intense or voluminous voice necessarily spells forceful or effec¬ 
tive expression. A loud, sonorous voice, if used without varia¬ 
tion in degree of force, soon becomes tiresome and painful to an 
audience. Sameness of vocal force suggests sameness of values, 
and an utter lack of discrimination in meanings. The effective 
speaker is the one who cultivates all degrees of force; a soft and 
low voice as well as a loud, voluminous one. It is contrast and 
variety in force that really give emphasis. A good way to ap¬ 
preciate this is to listen to good speakers, and observe how they 
vary the degree of force they use. I once heard Norman Thomas 
address a convocation of about thirty-five hundred students. 
His most striking and effective form of emphasis was a sudden 
drop from a loud, full voice to a soft, low one. The effect was at 


354 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


times almost electrical. It is a mistake to think that a soft, low 
voice may not be used to advantage even with a large audience, 
especially if one is gifted with a voice of good carrying power. 
A soft voice will often carry almost as far as a loud one. Much 
depends on the resonance quality of the voice. 

We recognize roughly three varieties of force: (i) the effusive; 
(2) the expulsive; (3) the explosive. It is convenient for the 
student of speech training to understand these terms. 

The effusive form of voice is one of very moderate volume and 
intensity and is supported by a gentle, steady pressure of the 
breathing muscles, giving it a smooth flow. It is used to express 
calm emotions, such as awe, reverence, wonder, the sublime. 
An effusive voice would be appropriate for the following stanza: 

With deep affection 
And recollection 
I often think of 

Those Shandon bells, 

Whose sounds so wild would, 

In the days of childhood, 

Fling round my cradle 
Their magic spells. 

The expulsive form of voice has a medium degree of volume 
and intensity, such as we use in ordinary animated conversation, 
and most often in platform speaking before audiences of moder¬ 
ate size. It is considerably more abrupt and energetic than the 
effusive form, and is supported by a sharper attack of the ab¬ 
dominal and intercostal muscles. We would use the expulsive 
form of voice in the following: 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 

The heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 

Whether we look, or whether we listen, 

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 



VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 355 

Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 

And, grasping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 

The explosive form of voice is the product of a sudden, sharp, 
intense vocalization that reduces the time element to a mini¬ 
mum. We use it when shouting and before large audiences, for 
there are times when one almost has to shout to be heard. It is 
always heard in college yells. We also use it to express sudden 
and somewhat violent emotions. When used with discretion 
and when under control, it may be a very powerful form of em¬ 
phasis. 

There is not much doubt that vocal force when used with 
taste and discretion has a peculiar persuasive effect on audiences. 
Many of our great speakers have had voices of catapultic power. 
Forceful expression suggests strong conviction on the part of the 
speaker, which tends to be transferred to the hearers. Besides 
this, thought and feeling when adequately expressed are more 
fully and easily comprehended by the audience, thus affording 
the largest measure of appreciation. 

3. Time. There are several aspects to the time element in 
speech. One has to do with the average rate of utterance best 
suited to an audience; another with prolonging syllables in 
words for purposes of emphasis as in accentuation; still another 
with retardation in rate of speaking — a very common form of 
emphasis. Let us consider these in turn. 

There is no one rate of utterance in speaking, adaptable to all 
persons. The rate of speaking is at least partly temperamental. 
It is just as natural for some persons to speak fast as it is for 
others to speak slowly. Floyd Gibbons on the radio must speak 
close to two hundred words a minute. He speaks distinctly and 
“gets away with it.” To many persons, it is not a pleasing rate 
of speaking. On the other hand, it is entirely possible to move 
too slowly, especially if a man has not much to say. A slow, 
ponderous, hesitant presentation may be distracting to an audi- 


356 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

ence and anything but effective. The rate of utterance is af¬ 
fected by the size of the audience. The larger the audience, the 
more slowly will the speaker move. No average can be struck, 
suitable for all speakers and all audiences. It is probable, how¬ 
ever, that a rate of about 125 words a minute will be suitable 
for the majority of speakers and pleasing to most audiences. 
The weightier the thought and the deeper the emotions, the 
more slowly one will move; conversely, the lighter the vein in 
which one speaks, the faster will be the movement, barring in¬ 
dividual differences. One thing may safely be affirmed; namely, 
that one should speak slowly enough to enunciate distinctly and 
be heard clearly and easily by those who listen. The tendency 
of young speakers is almost invariably to speak too fast and to 
enunciate in a more or less slovenly manner. 

In speaking or reading, we do not dwell the same length of 
time on all syllables. Some syllables are long and some are 
short, as a result of language development. We naturally ob¬ 
serve this in speaking. So again, some syllables are accented; 
some are not. We dwell longer on accented syllables than on 
the unaccented. The chief differences, however, in tone dura¬ 
tion, or in the time one takes to utter a syllable, depend on the 
emotional content of the thought or our personal attitude 
toward it. One may give almost any turn one wishes to a 
thought by dwelling longer on a certain syllable or word than on 
the rest. Lengthening the time element — retardation — is 
usually accompanied by other forms of emphasis, as for instance 
greater or less force. When Hamlet soliloquizes, 

To die; to sleep; no more. 

Perchance to dream; aye , there's the rub. 

he very likely dwells much longer on the italicized words than 
on the others. This is a most effective form of emphasis. 

When Webster, in his Dartmouth College argument, said, “I 
would not for this right hand of mine have her turn to me and 
say . . we can imagine he spoke very slowly and deliberately. 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 357 

When Wendell Phillips, in.“The Scholar in a Republic,” uttered 
a somewhat radical sentiment about the Russian government, 
and followed it with the statement: “I at least can say nothing 
else and nothing less. No, not if every tile on Cambridge roofs 
were a devil hooting my words” he probably uttered the last 
statement very slowly, almost with a pause between the words. 
He may have used more force also and combined the two forms 
of emphasis. 

Take the following from O’Connell: 

Gentlemen, God knows I speak for the saddest people the sun sees; 
but may my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth, if to help Ireland — even Ireland — I forget the 
Negro one single hour. 

Say this rapidly and see how ridiculous it sounds. It is strong 
language and must be spoken slowly. 

4. Pitch . As a tonal element, pitch serves primarily to ex¬ 
press distinctions in meaning, both intellectual and emotional — 
intellectual perhaps more than emotional. It is the mark of a 
finely modulated voice that it not only moves through a wide 
range of pitch, but that it does so easily and smoothly. It is 
only through variety in this vocal element that we can express 
delicate refinements of meaning. A voice that moves in a 
monotone is incapable of suggesting discriminations in values. 
It is true, also, that a voice that lacks variety in pitch is likely to 
lack variety in all the other tonal elements — quality, force, 
time. One has only to listen to a person partly or wholly deaf to 
observe the deadly monotony in all tonal elements. On the 
other hand, one need only listen to an animated discussion to 
note the variety in pitch and other vocal elements — the easy 
“swing” of conversation. It is largely in its pitch transitions 
1 or modulations that the trained voice of the actor is distinctive. 

Variety in pitch gives emphasis. This may take at least two 
! forms: the inflection , or slide, and sudden, abrupt transition 
! from one pitch to another. The downward slide is one of the 


358 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

most common forms of emphasis. It marks, for example, the 
difference between merely enumerating objects and giving them 
individuality. We can say, “There was Boston and Concord 
and Lexington and Bunker Hill,” merely naming them as towns 
or cities, and using a sustained inflection. If we put emotional 
meaning into these places, such as Webster meant they should 
have, each one will probably have a marked downward inflec¬ 
tion. 

Again, a somewhat abrupt change from a high pitch to a low 
pitch, or the opposite, gives emphasis. In the selection from 
O’Connell above, emphasis may be had with perfect naturalness 
by using a much lower pitch of voice for the last clause, “if I 
forget the Negro one single hour.” Try it. 

Enough has been said to impress upon you how all-important 
it is to have variety of tonal elements in your voice. When we 
speak naturally, and without the inhibitions of appearance in 
public, there is not much difficulty about variety and emphasis. 
Even a child of tender age knows how to emphasize. If his 
mother asks him to do something, perhaps wash his face, and if 
he is in the right mood, he may answer, “I will not”; using all 
the voice he can and prolonging each word as he utters it, so 
that it will sound something like this, “ I w-i- 1-1 N-O-T” This 
is a perfectly sound method of emphasizing, involving as it 
does both force and retardation, probably the most common 
forms of emphasis. The youngster can do this right, because 
he is not bothered with any inhibitions, and he has the proper 
emotional urge to resist his mother’s suggestion. 

Mental Content Important. The real trouble with a speaker 
who moves in a monotone of voice through the whole of a ten- 
minute speech is that there is nothing in his mind except words. 
His personality has not properly reacted to the ideas and feelings 
he is trying to express. If it had, the emphasis would largely 
take care of itself. The four-year-old reacted fully to his 
mother’s suggestion, and hence his high degree of effectiveness 
in emphasis. 



VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 359 

We may set it down as a sound principle that, just so far as 
the mind reacts to the thought and feeling content of a given 
sentence or selection and comprehends it with a fulness of mean¬ 
ing, just so far will proper expression result, with proper em¬ 
phasis, variety, and general effectiveness. This assumes, of 
course, that the voice is adequate and that bodily agents of 
expression are free. 

A mechanical approach should he avoided. It may be well 
here to guard the student against a too mechanical approach 
toward getting effective expression either for his own speech 
or for any selection that he may undertake’to interpret and ex¬ 
press. A technical knowledge of voice and tonal elements is 
worth while, for it is necessary to enable us to talk intelligently 
about such matters. But while such knowledge may serve as a 
standard by which to check our vocal processes and suggest 
need for improvement, it does not necessarily, nor in fact at all, 
afford the best method of approach for getting at meanings or 
giving them adequate expression. We do not get the best results 
by saying to ourselves, “I am going to emphasize this word and 
that word, use a high-pitched voice here and a low-pitched voice 
there.” That method will very likely give us just words and 
certain pitches of voice. To have such things in mind at the 
time of utterance is to introduce extraneous or adventitious ele¬ 
ments into the mental content. Remember it is the mental con¬ 
tent that counts. In the long run, you will express what is in 
your mind. If you are thinking of words and forms of emphasis, 
all you will express will be words and forms of emphasis. The 
question always to ask is: What does this mean? What does 
the author mean to convey in ideas and feelings? Meaning 
always has two aspects: intellectual and emotional. Words in 
their ordinary meaning express the former; the latter has to do 
with the attitude of the author or speaker toward the ideas so 
expressed. There is no difficulty about the meaning of the words 
in this passage from Macbeth: 

If it were done when ’tis done, Twould be well it were done quickly. 


360 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

But the greatest actors and interpreters are not agreed as to the 
author’s personal attitude in regard to this, or as to its emotional 
meaning. It is possible to render it so as to give it a variety of 
meaning, simply by emphasizing different words. It is the emo¬ 
tional meaning, the personal attitude, that is in dispute. So it is, 
almost invariably, when differences of opinion arise as to matters 
of interpretation. 

In working up selections — that is, giving them interpreta¬ 
tion and expression — a few suggestions may be given. 

1. Get the factual or historical background of the selection. Under 
what circumstances did the author write it? How was he moti¬ 
vated? What was his purpose? 

2. Get at meanings and values, and not merely at symbols. We do 
not get at values through proper emphasis. We get at proper em¬ 
phasis through understanding values, or meanings, especially emo¬ 
tional ones. Within limitations, the voice will express what you 
really think and feel. 

3. Visualize pictures as vividly as you can. Vivid images arouse the 
feelings, and help you get at values. 

4. Memorize the selection as a whole, rather than in parts. Ex¬ 
periments seem to have shown that this is the most economical 
and effective method. 

Enunciation. Enunciation has reference to a clear and distinct 
utterance of words. This sounds very simple, but it is one of the 
most difficult objectives to obtain in speech. When we reflect 
that the organs of speech — tongue, lips, teeth, palate — have 
to form from 500 to 750 articulate sounds in one minute (an 
average of ten to twelve a second), it would be a miracle if all 
of them were executed with precision. The miracle, as a matter 
of fact, seldom happens. The tendency for most persons is to 
form more or less careless and slovenly habits of speech utter¬ 
ance. Vowel sounds are not properly brought out, consonant 
sounds are slurred or even disregarded, and whole syllables are 
sometimes omitted or clipped off. Distinct enunciation is neces¬ 
sary for clearness; it also adds charm and effectiveness to speech. 



VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 361 

Take the following words much used these days. All have four 
syllables. How often do you hear them so given? 

ae'rial a'eronaut a'eroplane 

Take the sentence ’from “Toussaint L’Ouverture“Go to 
Hayti.” A large number of students will say this without using 
the t sound at all. The sound actually given for t approaches hr. 
Substitute this for /, and you will get it as usually given. 

A combination much abused is the ending sts. Usually the t is 
simply omitted. So, for interests we have interess; for trusts , 
truss; etc. 

To those who have a propensity to slur the sts ending, the 
following old stanza may prove useful. Memorize it, and get the 
consonant sounds right. 

Amidst the mists and coldest frosts, 

With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts, 

He hits his fists against the posts, 

And still insists he sees the ghosts. 

There is no panacea for slovenly enunciation, unless it be the 
will to enunciate clearly and distinctly. It is a matter of habit 
formation. If you are not willing to put forth the effort neces¬ 
sary to speak distinctly, no amount of direction will do you any 
good. If you are willing to concentrate attention on this, you 
should proceed to make a thorough study of vowel and con¬ 
sonant sounds, as they are combined in words, and then practice 
getting them right. The dictionary will guide you, and so will 
your teacher. Distinct utterance should be insisted on in every 
course in speech. 

Let it be said that distinct enunciation is not an end in itself. 
It is only a means to an end. It may be overdone and may make 
speech pedantic. The same is true of using the lips. Some per¬ 
sons will mouth their words. The tendency, however, is usually 
in the other directions — careless enunciation and stiff lips. The 
golden mean is the proper goal. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


362 

Pronunciation. In its broad aspects, the problem of pronun¬ 
ciation is a big one, as the pronunciation of words varies in 
different parts of the country and in different countries of the 
English-speaking world. What is correct in Minneapolis is not 
necessarily correct in New York; and what is correct in New 
York is often not good form in London. English people insist 
on pronouncing i long in words ending in ization — like civiliza¬ 
tion , organization. In the United States we make it short. 

The dictionary is the most dependable source of information 
on pronunciation, but even it has its limitations. To begin with, 
the same consonant sounds and vowels with their diacritical 
marks do not mean the same thing to people in different sections 
of the country. The Middle-Westerner looks at the word girl , 
puckers his lips, and pronounces it gurl, thinking that this is in 
accordance with the dictionary. The Easterner looks at the 
same word, pronounces it without puckering his lips, or at most 
very slightly, gives it a vowel sound that is somewhere between 
e in met and u in church , virtually omits the r sound, and affirms 
that he is pronouncing the word according to the dictionary and 
best usage. The same symbols mean different things to these 
two groups. This is true of several symbols. 

Again the values or characters of certain symbols, especially 
vowel sounds, as given by the dictionaries, are deliberately dis¬ 
regarded by whole sections of the United States. The vowel in 
certain words, such as laugh , mast , class, is, in certain sections of 
the country, as the Middle West, not so pronounced, except 
perhaps by a few professional teachers of speech, and by persons 
who have come from the East or from abroad. The question 
may be asked: Should the student of speech try to give these 
vowel sounds their acknowledged values and pronounce them in 
accordance with the dictionary? Whether he should or not, we 
may be sure that he will do no such thing. He is likely to be 
guided, not so much by the dictionary, as by the usage of the 
majority of the cultured people in his community or section of 
the country. He may admire the speech habits of the cultured 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 363 

few who have brought with them more correct usage from an¬ 
other section of the country, but he will not follow them. A 
teacher of English, with reputation as a critic on both sides of 
the Atlantic, used to say that no one should affect new vowel 
sounds after he is fifteen years of age. With some reservations, 
that may be sound advice. Usage that runs counter to the cul¬ 
tural standard of a section is hard to inculcate. 

This should not mean, however, that certain errors shall not or 
cannot be corrected. Some errors are much easier to correct 
than others, for the reason that correction of them does not 
sound so affected as in other instances. The preferential pro¬ 
nunciation of the vowel sound in haunt, taunt, laundry, staunch, 
etc., is the same as for a in arm. In the Middle West, at least, 
it is almost invariably given as the vowel sound in lawn. A stu¬ 
dent of speech may correct this without seeming affected. A still 
more important error, common in many parts of the United 
States, is the prostitution of the long u sound to the sound of 00, 
giving us constitootion, soot for suit, noo for new. One may correct 
this without seeming affected, and it is the consensus, I believe, 
that the language gains immensely by observing the best usage 
here. No student of speech ought to tolerate anything but an 
adequate bringing out of this important vowel sound. There is a 
noticeable improvement in this respect, in the Middle West at 
least, as a result probably of speech training and the standard 
set in radio announcing. 

With some reservations, mostly of a character already pointed 
out, the dictionary is the safest guide we have for pronunciation. 
This may be supplemented by the usage practiced by the ma¬ 
jority of cultured people. With some sectional differences, there 
is a fair uniformity of pronunciation in the United States. There 
is, for example, only one way to pronounce most of the following 
words. Consult the dictionary and see what it is. A few words 
permit of more than one pronunciation, and in such cases it is 
important to know what they are. 


364 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


A List of Words for Pronunciation 


a (article) 
abdomen 
absent ( v .) 
address (■ v .) 
address in.) 
adult 
aerial 

aeronautics 

ally 

almond 

architect 

amateur 

aunt 

ay (yes) 

aye (always) 

betrothal 

biography 

Celtic 

chauffeur 

combatant 


comely 

comparable 

condolence 

creek 

culinary 

data 

despicable 

discourse 

discern 

docile 

draught 

ennui 

exquisite 

forehead 

gala 

granary 

grimace 

harass 

hygiene 

impious 


inclement 

indisputable 

indissoluble 

long-lived 

margarine 

maritime 

mediaeval 

new (not nod) 

nude 

pianist 

prairie 

presentation 

romance 

status 

suit (not soot ) 
thither 
tomato 
vagary 


The dictionary is not necessarily final authority on pronuncia¬ 
tion, but it is usually correct, and the best available guide we 
have. If you pronounce words according to the dictionary 
(latest edition), you will be forgiven any errors you may commit. 
The trouble is that we take pronunciation, like so many other 
things, for granted when we hear it. It is a mark of the educated 
man that he does not take things for granted. He questions all 
things, including the pronunciation of words that may pass 
current around him. Why take for granted the pronunciation 
of a word when we can settle it for life, probably, in fifteen sec¬ 
onds? Students of speech should form a critical attitude toward 
pronunciation and cultivate habits in accordance with the best 
usage. 

Correct and distinct utterance adds greatly to the distinctive 


VOICE: PRONUNCIATION, ENUNCIATION 365 

charm of cultivated speech. Practice it diligently and you will 
be building up an enduring personality trait. 

SQUANDERING OF THE VOICE 
By Henry Ward Beecher 

How much squandering there is of the voice! How little is there of 
the advantage that may come from conversational tones! How sel¬ 
dom does a man dare to acquit himself with pathos and fervor! And 
the men are themselves mechanical and methodical in the bad way, 
who are most afraid of the artificial training that is given in the 
schools, and who so often show by the fruit of their labor that the 
want of oratory is the want of education. 

How remarkable is sweetness of voice in the mother, in the father, 
in the household! The music of no chorded instruments brought to¬ 
gether is, for sweetness, like the music of familiar affection when 
spoken by brother and sister, or by father and mother. 

Conversation itself belongs to oratory. Where is there a wider, a 
more ample field for the impartation of pleasure of knowledge than 
at a festive dinner? and how often do we find that when men, having 
well eaten and drunken, arise to speak, they are well qualified to keep 
silence, and utterly disqualified to speak! How rare it is to find 
felicity of diction on such occasions! How seldom do we see men who 
are educated to a fine sense of what is fit and proper at gatherings of 
this kind! How many men there are who are weighty in argument, 
who have abundant resources, and who are almost boundless in their 
power at other times and in other places, but who when in company 
among their kind are exceedingly unapt in their methods! Having 
none of the secret instruments by which the elements of nature 
may be touched, having no skill and no power in this direction, they 
stand as machines before living, sensitive men. A man may be as a 
master before an instrument; only the instrument is dead; and he has 
the living hand; and out of that dead instrument what wondrous 
harmony springs forth at his touch! And if you can electrify an 
audience by the power of a living man on dead things, how much 
more should that audience be electrified when the chords are living 
and the man is alive, and he knows how to touch them with divine 
inspiration! . . . 


366 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

How many men are there that can speak from day to day one hour, 
two hours, three hours, without exhaustion, and without hoarseness? 
But it is in the power of the vocal organs, and of the ordinary vocal 
organs, to do this. What multitudes of men wear themselves out be¬ 
cause they put their voice on a hard run at the top of its compass! — 
and there is no relief to them, and none, unfortunately, to the audi¬ 
ence. But the voice is like an orchestra. It ranges high up, and can 
shriek betimes like the scream of an eagle; or it is low as a lion’s 
tone; and at every intermediate point is some peculiar quality. It 
has in it the mother’s whisper and the father’s command. It has in it 
warning and alarm. It has in it sweetness. It is full of mirth and full 
of gayety. It glitters, though it is not seen with all its sparkling fan¬ 
cies. It ranges high, intermediate, or low, in obedience to the will, 
unconsciously to him who uses it; and men listen through the long 
hour, wondering that it is so short, and quite unaware that they have 
been bewitched out of their weariness by the charm of a voice, not 
artificial, not prearranged in the man’s thought, but by assiduous 
training made to be his second nature. Such a voice answers to the 
soul, and it is its beating. 

“But,” it is said, “does not the voice come by nature?” Yes; but 
is there anything that comes by nature which stays as it comes if it is 
worthily handled? We receive one talent that we may make it five; 
and we receive five talents that we may make them ten. There is no 
one thing in man that he has in perfection till he has it by culture. 
We know that in respect to everything but the voice. Is not the ear 
trained to acute hearing? Is not the eye trained in science? Do men 
not school the eye, and make it quick-seeing by patient use? Is a 
man, because he has learned a trade, and was not born with it, 
thought to be less a man? Because we have made discoveries of 
science and adapted them to manufacture; because we have de¬ 
veloped knowledge by training, are we thought to be unmanly? 
Shall we, because we have unfolded our powers by the use of our¬ 
selves for that noblest of purposes, the inspiration and elevation of 
mankind, be less esteemed? Is the school of human training to be 
disdained when by it we are rendered more useful to our fellow men? 


APPENDIXES 




■ 

















APPENDIX I 


SUGGESTIONS FOR CRITICISM OF SPEECHES 

A. Composition 1 

1. What type of speech is it? Informative? Impressive? 
Argumentative? Entertaining? 

2. If persuasive (most speeches are), what is the purpose 
sentence? Central idea, if used? Sub-ideas? (Every 
speech studied should be subjected to this analysis.) 

3. Consider the audience and the occasion. What is the 
relation of the speaker to the subject and the audience? 
What is the relation of the subject to the audience? 

4. Is the speech well begun? Properly related to the in¬ 
terests of the audience? Does the speaker make plain 
what he is talking about? 

5. What speech materials, or forms of support, are used? 
Are they well selected and effective, considering the 
audience and the occasion? Which forms predominate? 
Are propositions adequately supported? 

6. Are illustrations used freely? If so, are they effective 
and in good taste? 

7. Does the speaker use suggestion? If so, how, and with 
what effect? 

8. Is the speech or message consistently linked up with 
vital life interests of the audience? Is there judicious 
and adequate want appeal? Are points brought home 
concretely and vividly to listeners? 

9. Does the speech exemplify an effective speaking style? 
Simple? Direct? Informal? Personal? Original? 
Pictorial? 

1 This is only a guide. It does not pretend to cover all points. 

369 


37 ° 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


io. Does the speech hold attention? Does it possess suffi¬ 
cient variety in speech materials? Does it exemplify 
the leading factors of interestingness, such as the vital, 
the unusual, conflict, or challenge technique? 
n. Is the speech brought to a close effectively? Or is the 
conclusion too long and scattered in its appeal? Is 
there a summary? Emotional appeal? Is the final ap¬ 
peal properly related to the message of the speech? 

B. Delivery or Presentation 

1. Does the speaker use the conversational mode, as if 
speakinlg to or with a group of friends? Or does he speak 
at his audience? Does he show any tendency toward 
ranting? 

2. Does the speaker use his voice well? Not too much of 
it, and still enough so that all can hear comfortably? 
Does his voice possess variety in tonal elements — 
quality, force, pitch, rate? That is, is his voice well 
modulated? Or is there a tendency toward monotony? 

3. Is the speaker’s attitude toward his audience good, or 
persuasive? Does he show those qualities we like to 
see: geniality, humor, modesty, tact, confidence, moral 
earnestness, tolerance of the views of other persons? 
Or is he egotistic, unduly aggressive, antagonistic or 
negative, nervous, self-conscious, timid? 

4. Is his enunciation distinct, especially in difficult con¬ 
sonant combinations like sts ? Or is his enunciation 
overdone, so that it calls attention to itself? 

5. Does he pronounce words correctly? Are his vowel 
sounds correct? Does he pronounce soot and suit the 
same way? Etc. 


APPENDIX n 


SPECIMEN SPEECHES 

Informative: “Social versus Biological Inheritance,” 

by Clifford Kirkpatrick.372 

Impressive: “Acres of Diamonds,” by Russell H. 

Conwell.379 

“ Get Facts; Look Far; Think Through,” by William 

C. Redfield.413 

“The Usurpations of Society,” by Oscar W. Firkins . 421 

Argumentative: Lincoln’s “ Springfield Speech.” ... 426 

Entertainment: “Merchants and Ministers,” by 
Henry Ward Beecher. 


438 






SOCIAL VERSUS BIOLOGICAL INHERITANCE 

By Clifford Kirkpatrick 

(This is a radio speech by a member of the faculty of the University of 
Minnesota.) 

What is the social heritage or culture as it is now more com¬ 
monly called? For our purposes it may be very simply defined 
as an accumulation of socially acquired objects and impressions 
in a given group. Locomotives, steel rails, tools, and machines 
are socially acquired objects. They are socially acquired since 
they are made by men rather than occurring in nature as do 
cliffs and lakes. These useful objects are made possible by so¬ 
cially acquired impressions, for the habits and ideas involved in 
smelting and working iron are impressions passed from one 
generation to another. 

However, we can best grasp the significance of the atmosphere 
of culture in which we live, move, and have our being by at¬ 
tempting to imagine a group of humans without a social heritage. 
It is apparent that culture in the scientific sense is much broader 
in scope than traits such as good table manners, a well modulated 
voice, a knowledge of foreign languages, and a familiarity with 
literature, which are considered signs of culture in the popular 
sense. Let us suppose that a score or more of infants are selected 
from the homes of artists, doctors, teachers, wealthy business 
men, and statesmen. These children are transported to a fertile 
island in the South Seas, previously uninhabited, and are there 
abandoned. If left with an initial supply of food they might 
survive, but would be absolutely lacking in the social heritage 
that would have been theirs had they remained in the United 
States. An explorer visiting the island twenty or thirty years 
later would probably report the discovery of the lowest tribe of 

372 


SOCIAL VERSUS BIOLOGICAL INHERITANCE 373 

savages in the world. The children have been deprived of the 
customs, ideas, beliefs, skill, knowledge, tastes, values, morals, 
and language which they would have acquired in their native 
land. Furthermore, there would be no heritage of material 
objects such as tools, machines, buildings, libraries, muse¬ 
ums, theatres, railways, electric lights, the telephone, schools, 
churches, and the like. Even the use of fire might be unknown 
to them. They would have been cut off from the precious stores 
of wealth and knowledge so painfully accumulated during many 
thousand years of human history. We now see that a social 
heritage or culture consists of all the things that would be lacking 
under the circumstance; that is to say, socially acquired objects 
and impressions. 

Let us consider for a moment the traits which distinguish man 
from the other animals. First, man is possessed of an upright 
posture which leaves the forelimbs free for the manipulation of 
objects. The upright posture, when acquired, probably improved 
man’s power of vision and, by removing his mouth from the 
ground, further stimulated the use of his forelimbs. 

Second, it is to be noted that the human hand is unique in the 
position of the thumb and finger and in its general adaptability 
for complex movements such as those involved in the use of 
tools. 

Third, the large human brain with its well developed associa¬ 
tion areas in the front portion is of utmost importance. The 
human brain has well been called the organ of civilization. It is 
probable that the use of the hands furthered this important de¬ 
velopment. 

Fourth, man’s capacity for language and other forms of mean¬ 
ingful communication is probably the result of his large brain. 
It is also likely that this trait developed under the stimulation 
of social life, man probably having lived in groups from the be¬ 
ginning. Group life in itself, however, is not sufficient, for other 
social animals do not have language. Man’s four distinctive 
traits, upright posture, flexible hand, large brain, and linguistic 


374 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

ability, lead to a fifth characteristic. Man is a culture-building 
animal; that is to say, his culture accumulates far beyond the 
simple group habits of beavers or apes. 

Let us now see just how the possession of a social heritage 
separates man from the lower animals. In the first place, man 
has a great deal added to his biological inheritance while the 
lower animals have but little. In a hill of ants, for example, 
there is practically nothing but biological inheritance, the social 
organization, cooperation and complex activities of these in¬ 
sects being determined for the most part by the inherited struc¬ 
ture of individual ants. The same is true of bees. An entire 
society is potential within the queen bee. Her offspring are able 
to gather honey, build a hive, and perform many varied tasks; 
yet she did not teach them: they were born with these instinctive 
capacities. Some of the higher animals learn from each other. 
Birds, for example, acquire the song of those of another species 
with whom they are associated. Yet man alone has an actual 
stream of socially acquired objects and impressions flowing from 
generation to generation. Man profits by what others learn and 
do, as well as from his own biological inheritance. 

In the second place, the possession of a culture means that man 
changes through social rather than biological adaptation. The 
beast grows a fur coat, but man invents heat. The biological 
inheritance of the lower animals may be slowly altered, but it is 
knowledge and wealth, in other words the social heritage of man, 
that varies rather than his original nature. He makes inventions 
and achievements which accumulate during the passage of time, 
thus giving him an artificial control over nature. As a great 
sociologist puts it, “The environment transforms the animal 
while man transforms the environment.” Man, then, is pre¬ 
eminently a culture-building animal, and we owe much to those 
far-off ancestors of ours who first lit the torch of civilization and 
passed the flame from hand to hand, ever growing brighter 
through new inventions and more splendid achievements. 

Can it be that culture makes us human beings? The infant 


SOCIAL VERSUS BIOLOGICAL INHERITANCE 375 

certainly comes into the world with a structure and with po¬ 
tentialities characteristic of the human species; but, equipped 
only with this original human nature, he is the most helpless of 
creatures. Mere original human nature in itself does not make 
an organism a human being like those around us. Furthermore, 
if we imagine an adult stripped of all the culture that he has ac¬ 
quired as a member of a group, he is reduced to an essentially 
animal status. There are several cases on record of infants grow¬ 
ing up in isolation or with animals such as wolves, bears, and 
baboons. These children remained at an animal level of ex¬ 
istence. The primitive traits and behavior of these creatures 
tended to persist even after being restored to civilization. Some 
of these children may have been feeble-minded in the first place, 
but it would be a strange coincidence if this were true of all of 
them. In general, man becomes human by contact with a social 
heritage. 

Culture is transmitted by education, but not solely the formal 
education of the classroom. While the science of chemistry that 
has accumulated for generations may be passed on to the stu¬ 
dent in the school, he may also learn from his contemporaries. 

Learning from one’s own generation might be called horizontal 
education in contrast to the vertical education that is trans¬ 
mitted down through the centuries from one generation to an¬ 
other. Culture, therefore, not only descends vertically with the 
passage of time, but it also diffuses horizontally through space. 
There is a process of informal horizontal education whenever one 
personality is modified by another. The average college student 
is fully as much educated by his fraternity brothers as by his 
professors who seek to transmit the culture of the past. 

Culture is made continuous by education, while biological con¬ 
tinuity depends on the union of germ cells from two parents. 
Social immortality is due to education after birth, and the proc¬ 
ess must be repeated in each generation, for the germ cells are 
not effected by changes in the nervous system. It is apparently 
no easier to learn English now than formerly in spite of genera- 


376 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

tions of ancestors who learned to speak that language. If all 
education, direct and indirect, formal and informal, should cease 
for a generation, the continuity of the social heritage would be 
broken and it would cease to exist, just as a species becomes ex¬ 
tinct when a single generation fails to produce offspring. If our 
schools were blown up and left in ruins for a few decades, civili¬ 
zation would take on a very different appearance. As it is, the 
continuity remains unbroken and the average high school stu¬ 
dent knows far more about the universe than did the greatest of 
ancient philosophers, thanks to the richer social heritage which 
he has absorbed. 

There is great danger of confusing social with biological in¬ 
heritance; and where no actual confusion exists, a lively contro¬ 
versy rages over the relative importance of heredity as compared 
with culture. For example, are instincts really inborn, or are 
they partly habits? Are athletes born or trained? Are the ne¬ 
groes of different ability as compared with whites? Are men 
insane because they drink, or do they drink because they have a 
hereditary taint of insanity? Is a person good natured because 
of happy circumstances or because he was born that way? Is a 
student indifferent because his work is uninteresting or because 
he is dull? Is it possible to keep a good man down? Did the 
child contract tuberculosis through infection by the parent or 
because it inherited the parent’s weak lungs? All these questions 
are involved in the heredity versus environment controversy, 
but are not matters which can be settled in this brief talk. 
We must content ourselves with noting that social and biological 
inheritance are always in combination and that they are often 
confused in regard to (i) traits of the individual personality, 
(2) sex differences, (3) race differences, and (4) relations of 
biological and social change. 

In the first place, then, there is danger of confusion in regard 
to the individual. John Doe’s native traits have interacted 
with his social heritage to form that personality we know as John 
Doe. Suppose that he becomes a criminal. We might then be 


SOCIAL VERSUS BIOLOGICAL INHERITANCE 377 

inclined to say that he was born bad and by nature a criminal, 
but investigation would probably show that his particular social 
heritage was poor. His parents may have been ignorant and 
vicious, his house a shack, his playground the street, his com¬ 
panions a gang, his schooling inadequate. Evil conduct does 
not always mean evil nature originally, nor does ignorance al¬ 
ways mean stupidity. 

In the second place, there is a tendency to confuse social and 
biological inheritance in considering the differences between men 
and women. Women, for instance, are supposed by the popular 
mind to be interested in personal affairs, to be inclined to gossip, 
and to have less regard than men for details of the truth and all 
of this by virtue of their organic structure as women. This 
might conceivably be true, but it should not be accepted as 
truth until the influence of culture has been exhausted as an 
explanation. In regard to interest in personal affairs, it should 
be noted that woman’s activity tended, at least in the past, to 
be restricted to the sphere of the family and to center around 
husband, children, and social relations. If women gossip (and I 
am not so bold as to assert that they do), it may not be innate 
malice that impels them, but rather a desire to escape from 
boredom when recreational channels open to men are denied 
them. If women are deceitful, it should be remembered that for 
centuries they occupied an inferior social status and were forced 
to gain their ends by indirect means since direct aggression was 
impossible. 

In the third place, it may be pointed out that social and 
biological inheritance are often confused in connection with 
questions of race. An American business man does not speak 
English, use the multiplication table, pound a typewriter, and 
attend baseball games because he has a white skin. If trans¬ 
ported as an infant to a Chinese family he would be exposed to 
different customs, usages, ideals, and a different art and litera¬ 
ture. His plastic mind would be bent to a Chinese pattern of 
life just as that of a Chinese boy in this country becomes es- 


378 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

sentially American. We are inclined to consider certain races 
as by nature inferior, when their culture differs from our own, 
especially if it is more simple. It may be, however, that they 
never had a chance to borrow culture from others as we have 
done. Our material civilization of steam and electricity is merely 
due to the fact that we developed a mode of thinking known as 
the scientific method and a systematic body of knowledge known 
as science. When we say that the splitting of a tree by a bolt of 
lightning is due to electricity rather than an angry spirit, we 
are reflecting our social heritage just as much as the savage and 
are not necessarily more intelligent. 

Finally, care must be exercised that biological and social 
change be not confused. Organically man is almost identical 
with the cavemen who lived in western Europe. Furthermore, 
there is reason to believe that his intelligence was equal to our 
own. Members of the race who decorated the caves of France 
with their painting some twenty-five thousand years ago might 
be members of Phi Beta Kappa and football stars if living today. 
The invention of wireless telegraphy by Marconi probably re¬ 
quired no greater mental ability, given the contribution of 
Hertz, Lodge, and others, than that of the unknown genius who 
long before the dawn of human history invented the bow and 
arrow. Culturally, man stands on the shoulders of his ancestors, 
but is of no greater mental stature in his own right than the 
hunters who pursued the wild horse in Europe many thousand 
years ago. Civilization is an accumulated social heritage rather 
than a sudden increase in mental ability. 

Our social destiny depends upon using our relatively fixed 
abilities to accumulate a knowledge of social relations that can 
more nearly keep pace with the transformations and problems 
created by mechanical inventions. 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

By Russell H. Conwell 

(Russell H. Conwell, born in South Worthington, Massachusetts, 
February 15, 1843, was a famous clergyman and platform orator. 
He was pastor of the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, and president of 
Temple College. “Acres of Diamonds” is the most famous of his 
series of popular lectures. It was Dr. Conwell’s custom to adapt it 
more or less to local audiences. This accounts for the variations in 
different editions of the speech.) 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — The title of this lecture originated 
away back in 1869. When going down the Tigris River, we hired 
a guide from Bagdad to show us down to the Arabian Gulf. 
That guide whom we employed resembled the barbers we find 
in America. That is, he resembled the barbers in certain mental 
characteristics. He thought it was not only his duty to guide us 
down the river, but also to entertain us with stories; curious 
and weird, ancient and modern, strange and familiar; many of 
them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have. But there was 
one which I recall tonight. The guide grew irritable over my 
lack of appreciation, and as he led my camel by the halter he 
introduced his story by saying: “This is a tale I reserve for my 
particular friends .” So I then gave him my close attention. 

He told me that there once lived near the shore of the River 
Indus, toward which we were then traveling, an ancient Persian 
by the name of A 1 Hafed. He said that A 1 Hafed owned a large 
farm, with orchards, grain fields, and gardens; that he had money 
at interest; had a beautiful wife and lovely children, and was 
a wealthy and contented man. Contented because he was 
wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. 

One day there visited this old Persian farmer one of those 

379 


380 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the East, who 
sat down by A 1 Hafed’s fireside and told the old farmer how this 
world was made. He told him that this world was once a great 
bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust his finger into this 
bank of fog, and began slowly to move his finger around, and 
then increased the speed of his finger until he whirled this bank 
of fog into a solid ball of fire; and as it went rolling through the 
universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, it con¬ 
densed the moisture, until it fell in floods of rain upon the 
heated surface of the world, and cooled the outward crust; then 
the internal fires, bursting the cooling crust, threw up the moun¬ 
tains, and the hills, and the valleys of this wonderful world of 
ours. 

“ And,” said the old priest, “if this internal melted mass burst 
forth and cooled very quickly, it became granite; if it cooled 
more slowly, it became copper; if it cooled less quickly, silver; 
less quickly, gold; and after gold, diamonds were made.” Said 
the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.” 
That statement is literally true. 

And the old priest said another very curious thing. He said 
that a diamond was the last and the highest of God’s mineral 
creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God’s animal 
creations. That is the reason, I suppose, why the two have such 
a liking for each other. (Applause.) 

The old priest told A 1 Hafed if he had a diamond the size of 
his thumb, he could purchase a dozen farms like his. “And,” 
said the priest, “if you had a handful of diamonds, you could 
purchase the country; and if you had a mine of diamonds, you 
could purchase kingdoms, and place your children upon thrones, 
through the influence of your great wealth.” 

A 1 Hafed heard all about the diamonds that night, and went to 
bed a poor man. He wanted a whole mine of diamonds. Early 
in the morning he sought the priest and awoke him. Well, I 
know, by experience, that a priest is very cross when awakened 
early in the morning. 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


381 

A 1 Hafed said: “ Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?” 

The priest said: “Diamonds? What do you want of dia¬ 
monds?” 

Said A 1 Hafed: “I want to be immensely rich.” 

“Well,” said the priest, “if you want diamonds, all you have 
to do is go and find them, and then you will have them.” 

“But,” said A 1 Hafed, “I don’t know where to go.” 

“If you will find a river that runs over white sands, between 
high mountains, in those white sands you will always find dia¬ 
monds,” said the priest. 

“But,” asked A 1 Hafed, “do you believe there is such a river?” 

“Plenty of them; all you have to do is just go where they 
are.” 

“Well,” said A 1 Hafed, “I will go.” 

So he sold his farm; collected his money that was at interest; 
left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in 
search of diamonds. 

He began his search, very properly to my mind, at the Moun¬ 
tains of the Moon. Afterwards he came around into Palestine, 
and then wandered on into Europe. At last, when his money 
was all gone and he was in rags, poverty and wretchedness, he 
stood on the shore at Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal 
wave swept through the Pillars of Hercules; and the poor, 
starving, afflicted stranger could not resist the awful temptation 
to cast himself into that incoming tide; and he sank beneath 
its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again. 

When the old guide had told me that story, he stopped the 
camel I was riding upon and went back to arrange the baggage 
on another camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over this 
story. And I asked myself this question: “Why did this old 
guide reserve this story for his particular friends?” But when 
he came back and took up the camel’s halter once more, I found 
that was the first story I ever heard wherein the hero was killed 
in the first chapter. For he went on into the second chapter, 
just as though there had been no break. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


382 

Said he: “The man who purchased A 1 Hafed’s farm led his 
camel out into the garden to drink, and as the animal put his 
nose into the shallow waters of the garden brook, A 1 Hafed’s 
successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands 
of the stream. Reaching in he pulled out a black stone con¬ 
taining a strange eye of light. He took it into the house as a 
curious pebble and putting it on the mantel that covered the 
central fire went his way and forgot all about it. 

“But not long after that that same old priest came to visit A 1 
Hafed’s successor. The moment he opened the door he noticed 
the flash of light. He rushed to the mantel and said: — 

“‘Here is a diamond! Here is a diamond! Has A 1 Hafed re¬ 
turned? ’ 

“‘Oh no, A 1 Hafed has not returned and we have not heard 
from him since he went away, and that is not a diamond. It is 
nothing but a stone we found out in our garden.’ 

“‘But,’ said the priest, ‘I know a diamond when I see it. I 
tell you that is a diamond.’ 

“ Then together they rushed out into the garden. They stirred 
up the white sands with their fingers, and there came up other 
more beautiful, more valuable gems than the first. 

“Thus,” said the guide, — and, friends, it is historically 
true, — “were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the 
most valuable diamond mines in the history of the ancient 
world.” 

Well, when the guide had added the second chapter to his 
story, he then took off his Turkish cap, and swung it in the air to 
call my special attention to the moral; those Arab guides always 
have morals to their stories, though the stories are not always 
moral. 

He said to me: “Had A 1 Hafed remained at home, and dug in 
his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat field, instead of 
wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a strange land, 
he would have had Acres of Diamonds.” 

Acres of Diamonds! For every acre of that old farm, yes, 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 383 

every shovelful, afterwards revealed the gems which since have 
decorated the crowns of monarchs. 

When the guide had added the moral to this story, I saw why 
he reserved it for his particular friends. But I didn’t tell him 
that I could see it. It was that mean old Arab’s way of going 
around a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he 
didn’t dare say directly; that in his private opinion “ there was a 
certain young man traveling down the Tigris River, who might 
be better at home, in America.” (Laughter.) 

I told him his story reminded me of one. You all know it. 
I told him that a man in California, in 1847, owned a ranch 
there. He heard that they had discovered gold in Southern 
California, though they had not. And he sold his farm to 
Colonel Sutter, who put a mill on the little stream below the 
house. One day his little girl gathered some of the sand in her 
hands from the raceway, and brought it into the house. And 
while she was sifting it through her fingers, a visitor there 
noticed the first shining scales of real gold that were ever dis¬ 
covered in California. Acres and acres of gold. I was intro¬ 
duced, a few years ago, while in California, to the one-third 
owner of the farm, and he was then receiving one hundred and 
twenty dollars in gold for every fifteen minutes of his life, sleep¬ 
ing or waking. You and I would enjoy an income like that, now 
that we have no income tax. 

Professor Agassiz, the great geologist of Harvard University, 
that magnificent scholar, told us, at the Summer School of Miner¬ 
alogy, that there once lived in Pennsylvania a man who owned 
a farm, — and he did with his farm just what I should do if I 
had a farm in Pennsylvania. He sold it. (Applause.) But, 
before he sold it, he decided to secure employment, collecting 
coal oil. He wrote to his cousin in Canada that he would like 
to go into that business. His cousin wrote back to him: “I 
cannot engage you, because you do not understand the oil 
business.” “Then,” said he, “I will understand it,” and with 
commendable zeal, he set himself at the study of the whole 


384 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

theory of the coal oil subject. He began away back at the 
second day of God’s creation. He found that there was once 
another sun that shone on this world, and that then there were 
immense forests of vegetation. He found that the other sun was 
put out, and that this world after a time fell into the wake of the 
present sun. It was then locked in blocks of ice. Then there 
rose mighty icebergs that human imagination cannot grasp, and 
as those mountains of ice did ride those stormy seas, they beat 
down the original vegetation, they planed down the hills, top¬ 
pled over the mountains, and everywhere buried this original 
vegetation which has since been turned by chemical action to the 
primitive beds of coal, and in connection with which only is 
found coal oil in paying quantities. 

So he found out where oil originated. He studied it until he 
knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, how to refine it, 
and where to sell it. 

“Now,” said he to his cousin in a letter, “I know all about 
the oil business, from the second day of God’s creation to the 
present time.” 

His cousin replied to him to “come on.” So he sold his farm 
in Pennsylvania for $833 — even money, no cents. 

After he had gone from the farm, the farmer who had pur¬ 
chased his place went out to arrange for watering the cattle; 
and he found that the previous owner had already arranged for 
that matter. There was a stream running down the hillside 
back of the barn; and across that stream, from bank to bank, 
the previous owner had put in a plank edgewise at a slight angle, 
for the purpose of throwing over to one side of the brook a dread¬ 
ful looking scum through which the cattle would not put their 
noses, although they would drink on this side below the plank. 
Thus that man, who had gone to Canada, and who had studied 
all about the oil business, had been himself damming back for 
twenty-three years a flood of coal oil which the state geologist 
said in 1870 was worth to our state a hundred millions of dollars. 
A Hundred Millions! The city of Titusville stands bodily on 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


38s 

that farm now. And yet, though he knew all about the 
theory, he sold the farm for $833— again I say “no sense” 
(Applause.) 

I need another illustration. I find it in Massachusetts. The 
young man went down to Yale College and studied mines and 
mining, and became such an adept at mineralogy that during 
his senior year in the Sheffield School they paid him as a tutor 
fifteen dollars a week for the spare time in which he taught. 
When he graduated they raised his pay to forty-five dollars a 
week and offered him a professorship. As soon as they did that 
he went home to his mother! If they had raised his salary to 
fifteen dollars and sixty cents, then he would have stayed. But 
when they made it forty-five dollars a week he said: “I won’t 
work for forty-five dollars a week! The idea of a man with a 
brain like mine, working for forty-five dollars a week! Let us 
go out to California and stake out gold and silver and copper 
claims, and be rich.” 

Said his mother: “Now, Charley, it is just as well to be happy 
as it is to be rich.” 

“Yes,” said he. “It is just as well to be rich and happy too.” 
(Applause.) 

They were both right about it. And as he was the only son, 
and she was a widow, of course he had his way. They always do. 
So they sold out in Massachusetts and went, not to California, 
but to Wisconsin, and there he entered the employ of the Su¬ 
perior Copper Mining Company, at fifteen dollars a week again. 
But with the proviso that he should have an interest in any 
mines he should discover for the company. I don’t believe he 
ever discovered a mine there. Still I have often felt, when I 
mentioned this fact in northern Wisconsin, that he might be in 
the audience and feel mad at the way I speak about it. Still 
here is the fact, and it seems unfortunate to be in the way of a 
good illustration. But I don’t believe he ever found any other 
mine. Yet I don’t know anything about that end of the line. 
I know that he had scarcely gone from Massachusetts, before 


386 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


the farmer who had purchased his farm was bringing a large 
basket of potatoes in through the gateway. You know in Massa¬ 
chusetts our farms are almost entirely stone wall. (Applause.) 
Hence the basket hugged very close in the gate, and he dragged 
in on one side and then on the other. And as he was pulling 
that basket through the gateway, the farmer noticed in the 
upper and outer corner of that stone wall next to the gate, a 
block of native silver eight inches square. And this professor 
of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for 
forty-five dollars a week, because he knew so much about the 
subject, when he sold that homestead, sat on that very stone to 
make the bargain. He was born on that farm, and they told me 
that he had gone by that piece of silver and rubbed it with his 
sleeve, until it reflected his countenance and seemed to say to 
him, “Here, take me! Here is a hundred thousand dollars right 
down here in the rocks just for the taking.” But he wouldn’t 
take it. This was near Newburyport, Massachusetts. He 
wouldn’t believe in silver at home. He said: “There is no silver 
in Newburyport. It is all away off, — well, I don’t know where,” 
— and he didn’t. But somewhere else. And he was a Professor 
of Mineralogy. I don’t know of anything I would better enjoy 
in taking the whole time, than telling of the blunders like this 
which I have heard that “Professors” have made. 

I say that I would enjoy it. But after all there is another 
side to the question. For the more I think about it, the more 
I would like to know what he is doing in Wisconsin to-night. I 
don’t believe he has found any mines, but I can tell you what I 
do believe is the case. I think he sits out there by his fireside to¬ 
night, and his friends are gathered around him and he is saying 
to them something like this: — 


“Do you know that man Conwell who lives in Philadelphia?” 
“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” 

“Well, you know that man Jones who lives in-” 

“Yes, I have also heard of him,” say they. 

Then he begins to shake his sides with laughter, and he says: — 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 387 

“They have both done the same thing I did precisely!” And 
that spoils the whole joke. 

Because you and I have done it. Yet nearly every person here 
will say: “ Oh, no, I never had any acres of diamonds or any gold 
mines or any silver mines.” 

But I say to you that you did have silver mines, and gold 
mines, and acres of diamonds, and you have them now. 

Now let me speak with the greatest care lest my eccentricity 
of manner should mislead my listeners, and make you think I 
am here to entertain more than to help. I want to hold your 
attention on this oppressive night, with sufficient interest to 
leave my lesson with you. 

You have an opportunity to be rich; and to some of you it has 
been a hardship to purchase a ticket for this lecture. Yet you 
have no right to be poor. It is your duty to be rich. You have 
no right to be poor. It is all wrong. 

Oh, I know well that there are some things higher, sublimer 
than money! Ah, yes, there are some things sweeter, holier than 
gold! Yet I also know that there is not one of those things but 
is greatly enhanced by the use of money. 

“Oh,” you will say, “Mr. Conwell, can you, as a Christian 
teacher, tell the young people to spend their lives making 
money? ” 

Yes, I do. Three times I say, I do, I do, I do. You ought to 
make money. Money is power. Think how much good you 
could do if you had money now. Money is power and it ought 
to be in the hands of good men. It would be in the hands of 
good men if we comply with the Scripture teachings, where God 
promises prosperity to the righteous man. That means more 
than being goody-good — it means the all-around righteous 
man. You should be a righteous man, and if you were, you 
would be rich. (Applause.) 

I need to guard myself here. Because one of my theological 
students came to me once to labor with me, for heresy, inasmuch 
as I had said that money was power. 


388 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

He said: “Mr. Conwell, I feel it my duty to tell you that the 
Scriptures say that money is ‘ the root of all evil. ’ ” 

I asked him: “Have you been spending your time making a 
new Bible when you should have been studying theology?” He 
said: “That is the old Bible.” 

I said “I would like to have you find it for me. I have never 
seen it.” 

He triumphantly brought a Bible, and with all the bigoted 
pride of a narrow sectarian, who founds his creed on some mis¬ 
interpretation of Scripture, threw it down before me and said: 
“There it is! You can read it for yourself!” 

I said to him: “Young man, you will learn before you get 
much older that you can’t trust another denomination to read 
the Bible for you. Please read it yourself, and remember that 
‘emphasis is exegesis.’ ” 

So he read: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 

Indeed it is. The love of money is the root of all evil. The 
love of the money, rather than the love of the good it secures, 
is a dangerous evil in the community. The desire to get hold of 
money, and to hold on to it, “Hugging the dollar until the eagle 
squeals,” is the root of all evil. But it is a grand ambition for 
men to have the desire to gain money, that they may use it for 
the benefit of their fellow men. (Applause.) 

Young man! you may never have the opportunity to charge at 
the head of your Nation’s troops on some Santiago’s heights; 
young woman, you may never be called to go out in the seas 
like Grace Darling to save suffering humanity. But every one 
of you can earn money honestly, and with that money you can 
fight the battles of peace; and the victories of peace are always 
grander than those of war! 

I say then to you, that you ought to be rich. 

“Well,” you say, “I would like to be rich, but I have never 
had an opportunity. I never had any diamonds about me!” 

My friends, you did have an opportunity. And let us see 
where your mistake was. 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


389 


What business have you been in? 

“Oh,” some man or woman will say, “I keep a store upon one 
of these side streets, and I am so far from the great commercial 
center that I cannot make any money.” 

“Are you poor? How long have you kept that store?” 

“Twenty years.” 

“Twenty years, and not worth five hundred thousand dollars 
now? There is something the matter with you. Nothing the 
matter with the side street. It is with you.” 

“Oh, now,” you will say, “any person knows that you must be 
in the center of trade if you are going to make money.” 

The man of common sense will not admit that that is 
necessarily true at all. If you are keeping that store and you 
are not making money, it would have been better for the com¬ 
munity if they had kicked you out of that store, nineteen 
years ago. 

No man has a right to go into business and not make money. 
It is a crime to go into business and lose money, because it is a 
curse to the rest of the community. No man has a moral right 
to transact business unless he makes something out of it. He 
has also no right to transact business unless the man he deals 
with has an opportunity also to make something. Unless he 
lives and lets live, he is not an honest man in business. There 
are no exceptions to this great rule. (Applause.) 

You ought to have been rich. You have no right to keep 
a store for twenty years and still be poor. You will say to 
me: — 

“Now, Mr. Conwell, I know the mercantile business better 
than you do.” 

My friend, let us consider it a minute. 

When I was young, my father kept a country store, and once 
in a while he left me in charge of that store. Fortunately for 
him it was not often. (Laughter.) When I had it in my charge 
a man came in the store door and said: — 

“Do you keep jack-knives?” 


390 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


“No, we don’t keep jack-knives.” I went off and whistled a 
tune, and what did I care for that man? Then another man 
would come in and say: — 

“Do you keep jack-knives?” “No, we don’t keep jack- 
knives.” Then I went off and whistled another tune, and what 
did I care for that man? 

Then another man would come in the same door and say: “Do 
you keep jack-knives?” 

“No, we don’t keep jack-knives. Do you suppose we are 
keeping this store just for the purpose of supplying the whole 
neighborhood with jack-knives? ” 

Do you carry on your business like that? Do you ask what 
was the difficulty with it? The difficulty was that I had not 
then learned the foundation principles of business success and 
the foundation principles of Christianity, itself, are both the 
same. It is the whole of every man’s life to be doing for his 
fellow men. And he who can do the most to help his fellow men 
is entitled to the greatest reward himself. Not only so saith 
God’s holy book, but also saith every man’s business common 
sense. If I had been carrying on my father’s store on a Christian 
plan, or on a plan that leads to success, I would have had a jack¬ 
knife for the third man when he called for it. 

But you say: “I don’t carry on my store like that.” If you 
have not made any money you are carrying on your business like 
that, and I can tell you what you will say to me to-morrow 
morning when I go into your store. 

I come to you and inquire: “Do you know neighbor A?” 

“Oh yes. He lives up in the next block. He trades here at 
my little store.” 

“Well, where did he come from when he came to-” 

“I don’t know.” 

“What business is he in?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Do his children go to school?” 

“I don’t know.” 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


39i 


“What ticket does he vote?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“What church does he go to?” 

“I don’t know, and I'don’t care.” 

Do you answer me like that to-morrow morning, in your store? 
Then you are carrying on your business just as I carried on my 
father’s business in Worthington, Massachusetts. 

You don’t know where neighbor A came from and you don't 
care. You don’t care whether he has a happy home or not. You 
don’t know what church he goes to, and you don’t care! If you 
had cared, you would have been a rich man now. 

You never thought it was any part of your duty to help him 
make money. So you cannot succeed! It is against every law of 
business and every rule of political economy, and I would give 
five dollars myself, to see your failure in the “Ledger” tomorrow 
morning. What right have you to be in business taking no 
interest in your fellow men, and not endeavoring to supply them 
with what they need? You cannot succeed. 

That merchant, who, in the City of Boston, made his fifteen 
millions of dollars, began his enterprises out in the suburbs 
where there were not a dozen houses on the street; although 
there were other stores scattered about. He became such a 
necessity to the neighborhood that when he wished to move into 
the city to start a wholesale house, they came to him with a great 
petition, signed by all the people, begging that he would not 
close that store, but keep it open for the benefit of that com¬ 
munity. He had always looked after their interests. He had 
always carefully studied what they wanted and advised them 
rightly. He was a necessity; and they must make him wealthy; 
for in proportion as you are of use to your fellow men, in that 
proportion can they afford to pay you. 

Oh, my friend, going through this world and thinking you are 
unjustly dealt with! You are poor because you are not wanted. 
You should have made yourself a necessity to the world, and 
then the world would have paid you your own price. Friends, 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


39 2 

learn that lesson. I would speak tenderly and kindly to the 
poor; but I sometimes need to speak decidedly. 

Young man, remember if you are going to invest your life or 
talent or money, you must look around and see what people 
need and then invest yourself, or your money, in that which 
they need most. Then will your fortune be made, for they must 
take care of you. It is a difficult lesson to learn. 

Some young men will say to me: — 

“I cannot go into that mercantile business.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I have no capital.” 

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital! is the cry of a dudish 
generation which cannot see over its collar. (Laughter and 
applause.) 

Who are the rich men now? The poor boys of fifty years ago. 
You know it. The rich men of your town, in whatever profes¬ 
sion or calling they are, as a rule were the poor boys of forty or 
fifty years ago. If they had not been poor they wouldn’t be 
rich now. 

The statistics of Massachusetts say, and I presume it holds 
good in your State, that not one rich man’s son in seventeen 
ever dies rich. I pity the rich man’s son. He is not to be praised 
for his magnificent, palatial home, not to be congratulated on 
having plenty of money, or his yachts, carriages, and diamonds. 
Oh no, but rather to be commiserated. It is often a misfortune 
to be born the son of a rich man. There are many things a rich 
man’s son cannot know, because he is not passing through the 
school of actual experience. 

A young man in our college asked me: “What is the happiest 
hour in the history of a man’s life? ” The definition I gave him 
was this: The happiest hour in the history of a man’s life is when 
he takes his bride for the first time over the threshold of his own 
door, into a house which he has earned by his own hands; and 
as he enters the nest he has built he says to her, with an eloquence 
of feeling no words of mine can ever touch: “Wife, I earned this 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


393 

home myself!” Oh, that is the grandest moment a man may 
ever know. “Wife, I earned this home. It is all mine, and I 
divide it with thee!” (Applause.) It is a magnificent moment! 

But the rich man’s son cannot know that. He may go into a 
house that is more beautiful; but as he takes his wife into his 
mansion he will go all through it and say to her: “My mother 
gave me that! My mother gave me that. My mother gave me 
that! ” — until his wife wishes he had married his mother. (Ap¬ 
plause.) 

I pity such a young man as that. 

It is said that the elder Vanderbilt, when a boy, went to his 
father and said: — 

“Father, did you earn all your money?” 

And the old Commodore said: “I did, I earned every penny 
of it.” 

And he did. It is cruel to slander the rich because they have 
been successful. It is a shame to “look down” upon the rich 
the way we do. They are not scoundrels because they have 
gotten money. They have blessed the world. They have gone 
into great enterprises that have enriched the nation and the 
nation has enriched them. It is all wrong for us to accuse a rich 
man of dishonesty simply because he secured money. Go 
through this city and your very best people are among your 
richest people. Owners of property are always the best citizens. 
It is all wrong to say they are not good. 

The elder Vanderbilt went to his father and said: “Did you 
earn all your money? ” 

And when the Commodore said that he did, the boy said: 
“Then I will earn mine.” 

And he insisted on going to work for three dollars a week. 
If a rich man’s son will go to work like that he will be able to 
take care of his father’s money when the father is gone. If he 
has the bravery to fight the battle of poverty like the poor boy, 
then of course he has a double advantage. But as a rule the rich 
father won’t allow his son to work; and the boy’s mother! — 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


394 

oh, she would think it a social disgrace for her poor, weak, little, 
lily-fingered, sissy sort of a boy to earn his living with honest toil. 
And so I say it is not capital you want. It is not copper cents, 
but common sense. (Applause.) 

Let me illustrate it again. A. T. Stewart had a dollar and 
fifty cents to begin life on. That was of course before he was a 
school-teacher. He lost eighty-seven and a half cents on his very 
first venture. How did he come to lose it? He lost it because he 
purchased some needles, thread, and buttons to sell, which 
people did not want. And he said: “I will never do that again.” 
Then he went around first to the doors of the houses and asked 
the people what they did want; then when he found out what 
they wanted he invested his sixty-two and a half cents and 
supplied a “known demand.” 

Why does one merchant go beyond another? Why does one 
manufacturer outset any other? It is simply because that one 
has found out what people want, and does not waste his money 
buying things they do not need. That is the whole of it. And 
A. T. Stewart said: “I am not going to buy things people do not 
want. I will take an interest in people and study their needs.” 
And he pursued that until he was worth forty millions of dollars. 

“But,” you will say, “I cannot do that here.” Yes you can. 
It is being done in smaller places now, and you can do it as well 
as others. 

But a better illustration was John Jacob Astor, the elder. 
They said that he had a mortgage on a millinery store. I never 
reach this point without thinking that the ladies will say, that 
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” (Laughter.) But 
John Jacob Astor had a mortgage on a millinery store, and fore¬ 
closed the mortgage and went into business with the same people 
who had failed on his hands. After he entered into partnership, 
he went out and sat down on a bench in the Park. What was 
the successful merchant doing out there, in partnership with 
people who had just failed on his own hands? Ah, he had the 
most important and, to my mind, the pleasantest part of that 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


395 

partnership. He was out there watching the ladies as they went 
by — and where is the man who would not get rich at that 
business? As he sat upon that bench if a lady passed him with 
her shoulders thrown back and her head up, and looking straight 
to the front, as though she didn’t care if all the world did gaze 
on her, then John Jacob As tor studied the bonnet she wore; and 
before it was out of sight he knew the shape of the frame, and the 
curl of the lace, and crimp of the feathers, and lots of intricate 
things that go into a bonnet which I cannot describe. Then he 
went to his millinery store and said: “Now put in the show 
window just such a bonnet as I describe to you, because I have 
just seen a real lady who likes just such a bonnet.” Then he 
went and sat down again. Another lady, with another form and 
complexion, came, and, of course, she wore another style of 
bonnet. He then went back and described that and had that 
put into the window. He didn’t fill his show window full of 
hats in the back of the store and bewail because people went 
somewhere else to trade. (Applause.) He didn’t have a hat or a 
bonnet that some lady didn’t like. That has since been the 
wealthiest millinery firm on the face of the earth. There has 
been taken out of that business seventeen millions of dollars and 
over, by partners who have retired. Yet not a dollar of capital 
have they ever put into that business, except what they turned 
in from their profits — to use as capital. Now John Jacob 
Astor made the fortune of that millinery firm not by lending 
them money, but by finding out what the ladies liked for bonnets, 
before they wasted any material in making them up. And if a 
man can foresee the millinery business, he can foresee anything 
under Heaven. (Laughter and applause.) 

But perhaps a better illustration may strike closer home. You 
ought to go into the manufacturing business. But you say there 
is no room here. Great corporations which have gotten posses¬ 
sion of the field make it impossible to make a success of a small 
manufacturing business now. I say to you, young man, that 
there was never a time in your history and never will be in your 


396 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

history again when the opportunity for a poor man to make 
money in the manufacturing business is so clearly apparent as 
it is at this very hour. 

“But,” says some young man to me, “I have no capital.” 

Oh, capital, capital! Do you know of any manufacturer 
around here who was not born poor? Capital! you don’t want 
capital now, I want to illustrate again, for the best way to 
teach is always by illustration. 

There was a man in Hingham, Massachusetts, who was a 
carpenter and out of work. He sat around the stove until his 
wife told him to “go out of doors”; and he did, — what every 
man in Massachusetts is compelled to do by law, — he obeyed 
his wife. (Applause.) He went out and sat down on the shore 
of the bay and he whittled out an oak shingle into a wooden 
chain. His children that evening quarreled over it. So he 
whittled another to keep peace in the family. While he was 
whittling the second toy a neighbor came and said to him: “Why 
don’t you whittle toys and sell them? You can make money.” 
The carpenter said, “ I could not whittle toys, and if I could do it, 
I would not know what to make!” There is the whole thing. 
It is to know what to make. It is the secret of life everywhere. 
You may take it in the ministry. You may take it in law. You 
may take it in mechanics or in labor. You may take it in pro¬ 
fessional life, or anywhere on earth — the whole question is what 
to make of yourself for other people. “What to make” is the 
great difficulty. 

He said he would “not know what to make.” His neighbor 
said to him, with good New England common sense: “Why 
don’t you ask your own children what to make? ” 

“Oh,” said he, “my children are different from other people’s 
children.” 

I used to see people like that when I taught school. 

But he consulted his children later, and whittled toys to please 
them and found that other people’s children wanted the same 
things. He called his children right around his feet and whittled 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


397 

out of firewood those “Hingham tops,” the wooden shovels, 
the wooden buckets and such things, and when his children were 
especially pleased, he then made copies to sell. He began to get 
a little capital of his own earning, and secured a footlathe, and 
then secured a room, then hired a factory, and then hired power; 
and so he went on. The last law case I ever tried in my life was 
in the United States Courtroom at Boston, and this very Hing¬ 
ham man who had whittled those toys stood upon the stand. 
He was the last man I ever cross-examined. Then I left the law, 
and went into the ministry — left practising entirely and went 
to preaching exclusively. But I said to this man as he stood 
upon the stand: — 

“When did you begin to whittle those toys?” 

He said: “In 1870.” 

Said I: “In these seven years how much have those toys 
become worth?” 

He answered: “Do you mean the taxable value or the esti¬ 
mated value?” 

I said: “Tell his Honor the taxable value, that there may be 
no question about it.” He answered me from the witness-stand 
under oath: — 

“Seventy-eight thousand dollars.” 

Seventy-eight thousand dollars in only seven years, and be¬ 
ginning with nothing but a jack-knife (and a few hundred 
dollars of debts he owed other people), and so he was worth at 
least $100,000. His fortune was made by consulting his own 
children, in his own house, and deciding that other people’s 
children would like the same thing. You can do the same thing 
if you will. You don’t need to go out of your house to find out 
where the diamonds are. You don’t need to go out of your own 
room. 

But your wealth is too near. I was speaking in New Britain, 
Connecticut, on this very subject. There sat five or six rows 
from me a lady. I noticed the lady at the time, from the color 
of her bonnet. I said to them, what I say to you now, “Your 



39B THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

wealth is too near to you! You are looking right over it!” 
She went home after the lecture and tried to take off her collar. 
The button stuck in the buttonhole. She twisted and tugged 
and pulled and finally broke it out of the buttonhole and threw 
it away. She said: “I wonder why they don’t make decent 
collar buttons?” 

Her husband said to her: “After what Conwell said to-night 
why don’t you get up a collar button yourself? Did he not say 
that if you need anything other people need it; so if you need a 
collar button there are millions of people needing it. Get up a 
collar button and get rich. ‘ Wherever there is a need there is 
a fortune.’” (Applause.) 

Then she made up her mind to do it; and when a woman 
makes up her mind, and doesn’t say anything about it, she does 
it! (Applause.) And she invented this “ Snap button,” a kind of a 
button that snaps together from two pieces, through the button¬ 
hole. That very woman can now go over the sea every summer 
in her own yacht and take her husband with her. And if he 
were dead she would have enough money left to buy a foreign 
count or duke, or some such thing. (Laughter and applause.) 

What is my lesson in it? I said to her what I say to you, 
“Your fortune is too near to you! So near that you are looking 
over it.” She had to look over it. It was right under her chin. 
And it is just as near to you. 

In East Brookfield, Massachusetts, there was a shoemaker 
out of work. His wife drove him out of doors with a mopstick, 
because she wanted to mop around the stove. He went out and 
sat down on the ash barrel in the back yard. Close by that ash 
barrel ran a little mountain stream. I have sometimes wondered 
if, as he sat there on that ash barrel, he thought of Tennyson’s 
beautiful poem: — 

“Chatter, chatter, as I flow, 

To join the brimming river, 

Men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever.” 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


399 

I don’t believe he thought of it, because it was not a poetical 
situation, on an ash barrel in the back yard. (Laughter.) But 
as he sat on that ash barrel he looked down into the stream, and 
he saw a trout go flashing up the stream and hiding under the 
bank. He leaped down and caught the fish in his hands and 
took it into the house. His wife sent it to a friend in Worcester. 
The friend wrote back that they would give five dollars for 
another such trout. And the shoemaker and his wife imme¬ 
diately started out to find one. They went up and down the 
stream, but not another trout to be found. Then they went to 
the preacher. But that is not half as foolish as some other 
things young people go to a preacher for. That preacher could 
not explain why they could not find another trout. But he was 
true to his profession; he “pointed the way.” He said: “ Secure 
Seth Green’s book on the ‘ Culture of Trout,’ and it will give you 
the information you need.” They got the book and found that 
if they started with a pair of trout, a trout would lay thirty-six 
hundred eggs every year, and that every trout would grow an 
ounce the first year, and a quarter of a pound every succeeding 
year, so that in four years a man could secure from two trout 
four tons per annum to sell. They said: “Oh, we don’t believe 
such a great story as that. But if we could raise a few and sell 
them for five dollars a piece, we might make money.” So they 
purchased two little trout and put them in the stream, with a 
coal sifter down the stream and a window screen up-stream to 
keep the trout in. Afterwards, they moved to the banks of the 
Connecticut River, and afterwards to the Hudson, and one of 
them has been on the United States Fish Commission, and had a 
large share in the preparation for the World’s Fair in 1900 in 
Paris. But he sat that day, on that ash barrel in the back yard, 
right by his acres of diamonds. But he didn’t see them. He 
had not seen his fortune although he had lived there for twenty- 
three years, until his wife drove him out there with a mopstick. 
It may be you will not find your wealth until your wife assumes 
the sceptre of power! But nevertheless, your wealth is there. 
(Applause.) 



4oo 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING, 


But the people who make the greatest mistakes are the farm¬ 
ers. When I could not keep my father’s store he set me to work 
on the farm, knowing that as the ground was nearly all rock I 
could not do much harm there. (Laughter.) 

I know by experience that a very ordinary man can be a 
lawyer. I also know that it does not take a man with a gigantic 
intellect to be a preacher. It takes a greater man than either 
to make a successful farmer to-day. The farmer will be more 
successful when he gives more attention to what people want 
and not so much to what will grow, though he needs them both. 
But now the whole time of most of our farmers is taken up with 
the finding out of “what will grow.” 

I was going up through Iowa a while ago and saw the wheat 
decaying in mud, and I said to a farmer: — 

“Why is it that all this grain here is decaying?” 

“Oh,” he said, “it is the ‘awful’ monopoly of the railroads.” 
He didn’t use the word “awful,” but he used a word that he 
thought was more emphatic. (Laughter.) 

I got into the train and I sympathized with the poor down¬ 
trodden farmer. The conductor came along and I asked him: — 

“How much dividend does this railroad pay on its stock?” 

He looked at me and said: “It has not paid any for nine 
years, and it has been in the hands of the receiver the most of 
the time.” 

Then I changed my mind. If that farmer had raised what the 
people wanted, not only would he have been rich, but the rail¬ 
road would have paid interest on its stock. (Applause.) 

I was at Evansville, Indiana, and a man drove up in his beauti¬ 
ful carriage and told me: “ Eighteen years ago I borrowed two 
hundred dollars and I went into farming. I began the first 
year to raise wheat, rye, and hogs. But the second year I 
decided to raise what the people wanted, so I ploughed the 
ground over and put in small fruits. Now, I own this farm and 
a great deal more.” They told me at the hotel that he owned 
two-thirds of the stock in the bank of which he was president. 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


401 

He had made his money all because he planted what people 
wanted. 

Let me go down through the audience now, and ask you to 
show me the great inventors here. You will say: “That doesn’t 
mean me.” But it does mean you. Great inventors that hear 
me now! Oh, you will say, we don’t have any inventors here. 
They all live away off somewhere else. But who are the great 
inventors? Always the men who are the simplest and plainest. 
They are the great inventors. The great inventor has the sim¬ 
ple mind, and invents the simplest machine. 

Did you ever think how simple the telephone and the tele¬ 
graph are? Now the simplest mind is always the greatest. Did 
you ever see a great man? Great in every noble and true sense? 
If so, you could walk right up to him and say: “How are you, 
Jim? ” Just think of the great men you have met and you find 
this is true. 

I went out to write the biography of General Garfield and 
found him crowded with other people. I went to a neighbor’s 
to wait until they were gone. But the neighbor told me that if 
I wanted to get a chance to see him I had better go over at once, 
and he offered to introduce me. He took his old hat and stuck 
it on the back of his head, and climbed over the fence and went 
to the back-door of the house, and shouted: — 

“Jim! Jim! Jim!” 

Very soon “Jim” came to the door; and the neighbor said: 
“Here is a man who wants to see you.” 

I went into the house of one of the grandest men that America 
has ever raised. To his neighbors he was “Jim,” a plain man, 
a simple man. (Applause.) 

I went to see President Lincoln one time when I was an officer 
in the War of 1861. I had never seen him before, and his secre¬ 
tary sent me in to see him as one would enter a neighbor’s 
office. Simple, plain “old Abe.” (Applause.) 

The simple men are the greatest always. Did you ever see 
a man strut proudly along, puffed up in his individual pride, not 


402 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


willing to notice an ordinary mechanic? Do you think he is 
great? Do you really think that man is great? He is nothing but 
a puffed-up balloon, held down by his big feet. There may be 
greatness in self-respect, but there is not greatness in feeling 
above one’s fellow men. (Applause.) 

I asked a class in Minnesota once, who were the great in¬ 
ventors, and a girl hopped up and said, “Columbus.” (Laugh¬ 
ter.) Columbus was a great inventor. Columbus married a wife 
who owned a farm, and he carried it on just as I carried on my 
father’s farm. He took the hoe and went out and sat down on a 
rock. But as Columbus sat on that rock on the Island of Porto 
Santo, Spain, he was thinking. I was not. That was a great 
difference. Columbus as he sat on that rock held in his hand a 
hoe-handle. He looked out on the ocean and saw the departing 
ships apparently sink into the sea, and the tops of the masts 
went down, out of sight. Since that time some “other Spanish 
ships have sunk into the sea!” (Applause.) Said Columbus: 
“This world is like a hoe-handle, the further off the further 
down, the further off the further down, — just like a hoe-handle. 
I can sail around to the East Indies.” How clear it all was! 
Yet how simple the mind! It is the simplest minds that ob¬ 
serve the very simplest things, which accomplish the greatest 
marvels. 

I went up into New Hampshire and when I came back I said 
I would never go to New Hampshire to lecture again. And I 
said to a relative of mine, who was a professor at Harvard: — 

“ I was cold all the time I was there and I shivered so that my 
teeth shook.” 

Said he: “ Why did you shiver?” 

“Because it was cold.” 

“No, that is not the reason you shivered.” 

Then I said: “I shivered because I had not bedclothes 
enough.” 

“No, that is not the reason.” 

“Well,” said I, “Professor, you are a scientific man, I am not. 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


403 

I would like to have an expert, scientific opinion now, why I 
shivered.” 

He arose in his facetious way and said to me: “Young man, 
you shivered because you did not know any better! Didn’t you 
have in your pocket a two-cent paper? ” 

“Oh yes, I had a Herald and a Journal.” 

“That is it. You had them in your pocket, and if you had 
spread one newspaper over your sheet when you went to bed, 
you would have been as warm, as you lay there, as the richest man 
in America under all his silk coverlids. But you shivered because 
you didn’t know enough to put a two-cent newspaper on your 
bed, and you had it in your pocket.” (Applause.) 

It is the power to appreciate the little things that brings 
success. How many women want divorces, and ought to have 
them too; but how many divorces originate like this? A man 
will hurry home from the factory, and his wife rushes in from the 
kitchen with the potatoes that have been taken out before they 
seem to be done, and she puts them on the table for her husband 
to eat. He chops them up and eats them in a hurry. They go 
down in hard lumps; he doesn’t feel good, and he is all full of 
crankiness. He frets and scolds, and perhaps swears, and there 
is a row in the family right there. And these hearts that were 
almost divinely united will separate to satanic hatred. What is 
the difficulty? The difficulty is that that lady didn’t know what 
all these ladies do know, that if with potatoes raised in lime soil 
she had put in a pinch of salt when she put them in the kettle, 
she could have brought them forth at the right time, and they 
would have been ready to laugh themselves to pieces with edible 
joy. He would have digested them readily, and there would 
have been love in that family, just for a little pinch of salt. 
(Applause.) 

Now, I say, it is the appreciation of these things that makes 
the great inventors of the world. I read in a newspaper the 
other day that no woman ever invented anything. Of course 
this didn’t refer to gossip; but machines and improvements. 


404 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


(Laughter.) If it had referred to gossip, it would have applied 
better to that newspaper than to women. (Renewed laughter.) 
Who invented the Jacquard loom? Mrs. Jacquard. Who in¬ 
vented the printer’s roller? A woman. Who invented the 
cotton-gin? Mrs. Green; although a patent was taken out on 
an improvement in Mr. Whitney’s name. Who invented the 
sewing-machine? A woman. Mrs. Howe, the wife of Elias 
Howe. If a woman can invent a sewing-machine, if a woman can 
invent a printing roller, if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, we 
men can invent anything under Heaven! (Laughter and ap¬ 
plause.) I say that to encourage the men. Anyhow, our civiliza¬ 
tion would roll back if we should cross out the great inventions 
of women, though the patents were taken out often in the names 
of men. 

The greatest inventors are those who see what the people 
need, and then invent something to supply that need. Let me 
illustrate only once more. Suppose I were to go through this 
house and shake hands with each of you and say: “Please 
introduce me to the great men and women in this hall to¬ 
night.” 

You would say: “Great men! We don’t have any here. 
There are none in this audience. If you want to find great men 
you must go to some other part of the world! Great men always 
come from somewhere else.” 

How many of your men with vast power to help your city, 
how many with great genius, or great social power, who might 
enrich and beautify and elevate this, their own city, are now 
taking their money and talents and spending them in some 
foreign place, instead of benefiting their own people here? Yet 
here is the place for them to be great. There are as great men 
here as in any other place of its size. But it is so natural for us 
to say that great men come from afar. They come from London, 
from Rome, from San Francisco, from New York, from Man- 
ayunk, or anywhere else. But there are just as great men hear¬ 
ing me speak to-night as there are elsewhere, and yet, who, 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


405 

because of their simplicity, are not now appreciated. But “ the 
world knows nothing of its greatest men,” says the great 
philosopher; and it is true. Your neighbor is a great man and 
it is time you appreciated it, and if you do not appreciate it now, 
you never will. The only way to be a true patriot is to be a true 
patriot at home. A man who cannot benefit his own city should 
never be sent to Washington. Towns and cities are cursed be¬ 
cause their own people talk them down. A man who cannot 
bless his own community, the place in which he lives, should not 
be called a patriot anywhere else. To these young men I want 
to utter this cry with all my force. Here is the place for you to 
be great, and here are your great men. 

But we teach our young people to believe that all the great 
people are away off. I heard a professor in an Illinois college 
say, that “nearly all the great men are dead.” We don’t want 
him in Philadelphia. (Laughter.) They don’t want him any¬ 
where. The greatest men are living now, and will only be 
exceeded by the generations to come; and he who appreciates 
that fact will look around him and will respect his neighbor, 
and will respect his environment. I have to say to-night, that 
the great men of the world are those who appreciate that which 
is next to them, and the danger now to our nation is that we 
belittle everything that is at home. 

Have you heard the campaign speeches this year? I heard a 
man at the Academy of Music say that our nation is going to 
ruin; that the Ship of State is drifting upon the rocks and will 
soon be shattered into ten thousand fragments, and this Re¬ 
public will be no more; that there will be founded an empire, 
and upon the empire we will put a throne, and upon the throne 
will be placed a tyrant, and he with his iron heel will grind the 
people into dust. It is a lie! (Applause.) Never in the history 
of God’s government of mankind was there a nation stepping 
upward more certainly toward all that is grand and beautiful 
and true than is the Nation of America to-day! Let the poli¬ 
ticians say what they will for personal greed, let them declaim 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


406 

with all their powers, and try to burden the people, you and I 
know that whichever way the elections may go, the American 
people are not dead, and the nation will not be destroyed. It 
is a living body, this mighty Republic, and it cannot be killed 
by a single election. And they that will belittle our nation are 
not patriots. Let the land be filled with hope. Some young 
men will say: “Oh well, the nation is having a hard time.” 
But it is not. The Bible says: “It is good for me that I was 
afflicted.” We are getting down to where we can consider and 
take account of stock. In the next five years from this 1893 you 
will see the most flourishing institutions; all through this land 
will be united a prosperity such as this nation never knew before. 
Whatever the result of the election, don’t belittle your own 
nation. 

Some young man is saying: “There is going to be a great man 
here, although I don’t know of any now.” 

“Young man, when are you going to be great?” 

“When I am elected to some political office, then I will be 
great.” 

Oh, young man, learn right now, in these exciting times, that 
to hold a political office under our form of government is no 
evidence of greatness. Why, my friends, what would become 
of this nation if our great men should take office? Suppose you 
select the greatest men of your city right now, and ask them to 
leave their great enterprises and go into some political office. 
My friends, what a ruin would be left if the great men were to 
take political offices! The great men cannot afford to take 
political office, and you and I cannot afford to put them there. 
To hold a political office is to be a servant of the people. And 
the Bible says, “He that is sent cannot be greater than he who 
sends him,” and “ the servant cannot be greater than his master.” 
The office-holder is the servant of others. He is sent by the 
people, he cannot be greater than the people. You think you 
are going to be a great man by being elected to some political 
office! Young man, greatness is intrinsic; it is in the personality, 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


407 

not in the office. If you are not great as an individual before you 
go into the office, you may rattle around in it after you get in, 
like “shot in a tin pan.” There will be no greatness there. 
You will hold the office for a year or more and never be heard of 
again. There are greater things than political office. Many a 
young man’s fortune has been made by being defeated when he 
was up for political office. You never saw a really great man in 
office who did not take the office at a sacrifice to himself. 

Another young man says: “There is going to be a great man 
here.” 

“When?” 

“ When there comes a war! When we get into another conflict 
with Spain over Cuba; with England over the Monroe Doctrine, 
or over the Russian boundary, or with New Jersey, or some dis¬ 
tant country of the world (Laughter), then I will sweep up 
among the glittering bayonets, then I will tear down their flag 
from the staff, bear it away in triumph, and come home with 
stars on my shoulders, and hold every office in the gift of the 
nation; then I will be great!” 

Young man, remember greatness does not consist in holding 
office, even in war. The office does not make the great man. 
But, alas, we mislead the young in teaching history. If you 
ask a scholar in school who sank the “Merrimac,” he will 
answer “Hobson,” and tell seven-eighths of a lie. For eight 
men sank the “Merrimac” at Santiago. Yet where are the 
women here to-night who have kissed the other seven men? 
(Laughter.) 

A young man says: “I was studying the history of the War 
the other day and read about Generals Grant, Meade, Beaure¬ 
gard, Hood, and these great leaders, and they were great.” 

Did you read anything about their predecessors? There is 
very little in history about them. If the office had made their 
predecessors great, you would not have heard of Grant, or 
Sherman, or McClellan. But they were great men intrinsically, 
not made so by the office. The way we teach history leads the 


408 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

young to think that when people get into office they then be¬ 
come great men. But it is terribly misleading. 

Every great general of the war is credited with many victories 
he never knew anything about, simply because they were won 
by his subordinates. But it is unfair to give the credit to a 
general who did not know anything about it. I tell you if the 
lightning of heaven had struck out of existence every man who 
wore shoulder-straps in our wars, there would have arisen out 
of the ranks of our private soldiers just as great men to lead the 
nation on to victory. 

I will give one more illustration. I don’t like to give it. I 
don’t know how I ever fell into the habit. Indeed, it was first 
given offhand to a Grand Army post of which I was a member. 
I hesitate to give it now. 

I close my eyes and I can see my own native hills once more. 
I can see my mountain town and plateau, the Congregational 
Church, and the Town Hall. They are there spread before me 
with increasing detail as my years fly by. I close my eyes and 
I can see the crowd again that was there in that war-time, 1864, 
dressed in red, white, and blue; the flags flying, the band playing. 
I see a platoon of soldiers who have returned from one term of 
service and reenlisted for the second, and are now to be received 
by the mountain town. Oh, well do I remember the day! I was 
captain of the company. Although in my teens, I was marching 
at the head of that company and puffed out with pride. A 
cambric needle would have burst me all to pieces! (Laughter.) 
I am sincerely ashamed of the whole thing now. But what 
august pride, then in my youth, marching at the head of my 
troops, being received by the country town authorities! We 
marched into the Town Hall. They seated my soldiers in the 
middle of the hall, and the crowds came in on the right and on 
the left. Then the town officers filed upon the stand and took 
up their position in a half-circle. The good old Mayor of the 
town, and the Chairman of the Selectmen (his family gave me 
permission to use this without offense to them), he sat there in 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


409 

his dignity, with his powerful spectacles. He had never held an 
office in his life before. He may have thought that if he could 
get into office that would give him power to do almost anything. 
He never held an office before, and never made a speech before. 
When he had taken his place he saw me on the front seat, and he 
came right forward and invited me up on the platform with 
the “Selectmen.” Invited me, me! up on the stand with the 
town officers! Why, no town officer ever took any notice of me 
before I went to war; yet perhaps I ought not to say that, be¬ 
cause one of them, I remember, did advise a teacher to “whale” 
me; but I mean no “honorable mention.” (Laughter and ap¬ 
plause.) Now I am invited on the stand with the Selectmen. 
They gave me a chair in just about this relation to the table. 
(Indicating the position.) I sat down, let my sword fall to the 
floor and waited to be received —- Napoleon the Vth — “Pride 
goeth before destruction,” and it ought. When the Selectmen 
and the Mayor had taken seats the Mayor waited for quite a 
while, and then came forward to the table. Oh, that speech! 
We had supposed he would simply introduce the Congressional 
minister, who usually gave such public addresses. But you 
should have seen the surprise when this old man arose to deliver 
the address, on this august occasion. He had never delivered an 
address before. He thought the office would make him an orator. 
But he forgot that a man must speak his piece as a boy if he 
wishes to become an orator as a man. Yet he made a most 
common mistake. So he had written out his speech and learned 
it by heart. But he brought his manuscript with him, very 
wisely, and took it out, opened it, and spread it on the table, 
and then adjusted his spectacles that he might see it. Then he 
walked back and came forward again to deliver that address. 
He must have studied the idea a great deal, because he assumed 
an “ elocutionary attitude.” He “ rested heavily on his left heel, 
slightly advanced, his right foot, threw back his shoulders, and 
advanced his right hand at an angle of forty-five.” (Laughter.) 
As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, this is just the way he 


4io 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


delivered that speech. Friends often ask me if I do not exag¬ 
gerate it. You couldn’t exaggerate it. I haven’t the power to 
exaggerate it. — 

“Fellow citizens!” — and then he paused until his fingers 
and knees shook, and began to swallow, then turned aside to 
look at his manuscript. 

“Fellow citizens: — We are — we are — we are — we are 
very happy. We are very happy — we are very happy — we are 
very happy. We are very happy — to welcome back — to their 
native town — to their native town — these soldiers — these 
soldiers — who have fought and bled, and are back again in their 
native town. We are especially, — we are especially pleased to 
see with us to-night this young hero, — (that meant me) — who 
in imagination — (friends, remember he said that; if he hadn’t 
said that I wouldn’t have been egotistic enough to refer to it 
to-day, I assure you) — who, in imagination, — we have seen 
leading his troops on to the deadly breach. We have seen his 
shining — we have seen his shining — his shining sword — we 
have seen his shining sword, flashing in the sunlight, as he 
shouted to his troops, 'Come on!’” (Laughter and applause.) 

Oh, dear, dear, dear! He was a good old man, but how little 
he knew about the War. If he had known anything about war at 
all, he ought to have known that it is next to a crime for an 
officer of infantry ever, in time of danger, to go ahead of his men. 
I, with “my shining sword flashing in the sunlight,” and calling 
to my troops, “Come on!” I never did it. Do you suppose I 
would go in front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy, 
and in the back by my own men? It is no place for an officer. 
The place for an officer in time of danger is behind the private 
soldier. It is the private soldier who faces the enemy. Often, 
as a staff officer, I have ridden down the line, before the battle, 
and as I rode I have given the general’s order, shouting “Officers 
to the rear!” And then every officer goes behind the line of 
private soldiers, and the higher the officer’s rank, the farther 
behind he goes. It is the place for him; for, if your officers and 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


411 

your generals were killed on the first discharge, where would the 
plan of the battle be? How ashamed I was of the whole affair! 
In actual battle such an officer has no right to go ahead of his 
men. Some of those men had carried that boy across the 
Carolina rivers. Some of them had given him their last draught 
of coffee. One of them had leaped in front of him and had his 
cheek-bone shot away; he had leaped in front of the boy to save 
his life. Some were not there at all, and the tears flowing from 
the eyes of the widows and orphans showed that they had gone 
down for their country. Yet in the good man’s speech he 
scarcely noticed those who had died; the hero of the hour was 
that boy. We do not know even now where many of those 
comrades do sleep. They went down to death. Sometimes in 
my dreams I call, “Answer me, ye sighing pines of the Carolinas; 
answer me, ye shining sands of Florida; answer me, ye crags and 
rocks of Kentucky and Tennessee, — where sleep my dead? ” 
But to my call no answer comes. I know not where many of 
those men now sleep. But I do know this, they were brave men. 
I know they went down before a brave foe, fighting for a cause 
both believed to be right. Yet the hero of this hour was this 
boy. He was an officer, and they were only private soldiers. 

I learned a lesson then I will never forget, until the bell of 
time ceases to swing for me, — that greatness consists not in 
holding an office. Greatness really consists in doing great deeds 
with little means, — in the accomplishment of vast purposes; 
from the private ranks of life — in benefiting one’s own neigh¬ 
borhood, in blessing one’s own city, the community in which he 
dwells. There, and there only, is the great test of human good¬ 
ness and human ability. He who waits for an office before he 
does great and noble deeds must fail altogether. 

I learned that lesson then, that henceforth in life I will call no 
man great simply because he holds an office. Greatness! It is 
something more than office, something more than fame, more 
than genius! It is the great-heartedness that encloses those in 
need, reaches down to those below, and lifts them up. May 


412 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


this thought come to every one of these young men and women 
who hear me speak tonight and abide through future years. 
(Applause.) 

I close with the words of Bailey. He was not one of our 
greatest writers, but after all, in this he was one of our best: — 

“ We live in deeds, not years, 

In feelings, not in figures on a dial, 

In thoughts, not breaths; 

We should count time by heart throbs; (in the cause of right) 
He most lives who thinks most” 

Oh, friends, if you forget everything else I say, don’t forget 
these two lines; for, if you think two thoughts where I think one, 
you will live twice as much as I do in the same length of time. — 

“He most lives who thinks most 
Who feels the noblest, 

And who acts the best.” 


(Great applause.) 


GET FACTS; LOOK FAR; THINK THROUGH 
William C. Redfield 

(This address was delivered at Boston University, September 25, 
1916, before the student assembly of the College of Business Ad¬ 
ministration.) 

I have been cudgeling what serves me for a brain in an effort to 
find something to say to you that would “stick.” Of course it 
must be worth sticking or it will not stick, and therein lies the 
difficulty. One does not wish to place before you a series of 
bromidiums nor to repeat that which instructors will tell you 
far better in the coming weeks. 

Casting about, therefore, for something real, and looking back 
for that purpose over a long business life, two or three brief 
phrases have occurred to me, which as they are looked at from 
different angles seem to present principles so clear, so sound, so 
proven, as to be worth stating. Let us take then the subject 
for this evening’s talk the following terse business maxims: 

Get facts; look far; think through. 

In these six words lie packed masses of worldly and of spiritual 
wisdom. They are easy words to say, but the processes they 
represent are most difficult to do. They involve abandonment 
of mental habits, the forsaking of preconceived ideas, the non- 
acceptance of many current doctrines, the assertion of indi¬ 
viduality, the restraint from hasty conclusions, the formation of 
unwonted habits; they call for effort, training, and long practice. 

I think it is true no man has ever succeeded largely in the 
business world without having all three of these principles 
present in his work to some degree. On the other hand, the 
presence of one or another of them without the rest often works 
serious damage. For these principles are full of power, and 
power that is uncontrolled works harm. 

413 


414 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


For one to get facts may make him but a grubber into old 
tomes, if he does naught else. For one to look far may mean to 
become visionary, if that be all he does. For one to think 
through may make him a dreamer in an active world or lead to 
indecision. The facts must be used with the thorough thought 
and the far outlook if the balance of mental power in business 
life is to be fruitful. Let us, then, look briefly at these three 
principles to see something of what they involve. 

First, then, get facts. If we apply this principle as a measure 
to the business world we shall soon see that the men who live 
up to this principle are relatively few and lonely, and that most 
of us deal to a greater or less extent with fancies or with fallacies 
which we hope or believe are facts. Few of us will go as far in 
practice as the man who said to me, “If I don’t know why I 
know what I think I know, then I want to know.” Most of us 
are content with assumptions, and few follow the scriptural 
maxim to prove all things and to hold fast that which is good. 
Yet facts, as has been well said, are stubborn things, and you 
may make up your mind now that if during your business lives 
you do not get the facts, the facts will get you. 

It is not always easy to get the facts. On the contrary, it is 
commonly hard to get them, and because it is hard we are apt to 
accept assertions as to the facts from those who we think ought 
to know instead of exerting ourselves to learn them directly. A 
business man feels, for example, that his competitor uses un¬ 
worthy practices and is tempted himself to follow the bad ex¬ 
ample lest in competition he be outdone. He does not certainly 
know his competitor does these things. He is told it and be¬ 
lieves it because perhaps he cannot otherwise explain some 
success that competitor has won. It is commonly a mistake, and 
if he sought patiently for the facts he would often find them 
and save himself from an error of judgment respecting another 
and from business mistakes upon his own part. 

Another man — many a man — thinks he knows what it costs 
him to do business. He does not know that he knows. He 


GET FACTS; LOOK FAR; THINK THROUGH 415 

merely thinks he does. He gets along, perhaps for years, without 
actually learning the truth about the cost of his own business. 
You will say that self-interest, common sense, and other equally 
strong motives would make him learn the truth. I agree they 
ought to do so, but the fact is they do not. The Chairman of the 
Federal Trade Commission says half the business concerns do 
not know what it costs them to do business, and the experience 
of the accountants of my own department justifies the statement. 
I once worked as bookkeeper for a man who would not allow a 
trial balance to be taken. Although for my own protection, 
under the advice of wiser men, I took this trial balance privately, 
he never knew, or inquired, what the full facts were respecting 
his own business. I was accountant for a man who after thirty 
years’ experience sold for $8000 an apparatus which, including 
overhead, cost him $9000 to produce, and he was angry when a 
younger man than he suggested the facts to him. A friend was 
employed to examine into the operations of an industry only to 
find the methods of the management were bad; but that man¬ 
agement strenuously objected to being told so. One must not 
go so far as to forget that there are in the business world thou¬ 
sands of men accurate and careful in the matters we are dis¬ 
cussing, but there are more of the other kind, and some of them 
sit in high places. 

Again there are the men who want all facts which concur with 
their preconceived opinions and who resent facts which do not 
so agree. Such concerns have little use for the cold and search¬ 
ing light of science, to which all truth is of equal value. They 
are content with a portion of the facts and object to being 
shaken out of the rut in which they run. 

Furthermore the business world is full of facts which fight. 
There are moral facts which oppose immoral facts; honest facts 
which hate dishonest facts; partial facts which hate whole facts; 
crooked facts which abhor the straight ones. Yet the stern 
teaching of experience is that the crooked and the dishonest 
facts when the light is thrown on them prove not to be facts at 


416 the art of effective speaking 

all, but only pseudo facts, having the appearance but not the 
reality. 

To get facts, then, is fundamental. With them you stand on 
solid ground. Without them, or with them but partially, your 
footing is uncertain. You must have a docile mind, however, if 
you are to follow this rule, a mind open to truth, even to un¬ 
pleasant truth, even to truth which sets awry that which you 
have believed and been taught. Yet the strong man sets his 
mind four-square to the truth and abhors that particularly 
villainous form of falsehood which tells but half of it. 

First and foremost, then, as a mental quality and as a business 
practice, let me urge upon you this simple yet complex duty, 
Get facts. Do not be afraid of them, for they have no fear of 
you. If you have them with you, you are safe. Without them 
you are always in danger. Know your job. Don’t merely 
think you know it. There is always place in the world for the 
man that knows and who knows that he knows. 

This done you have well begun. Candidly, you will probably 
spend a lifetime in the doing of it and meanwhile have other 
serious work to do. 

Next I have set the principle “Look far.” Let no pent-up 
Utica confine your powers. The way in which you treat this 
second principle will show if you are large or little men. A little 
man may get facts, but he cannot use them largely for he is too 
small himself. A blind man might have certain facts at hand of 
which he knew, but he could not use them well since he is blind. 
In the mental world there are relative shades of blindness. 
There is a great deal of nearsight, a very large mass of ordinary 
sight; but the men of far mental sight, those who are called men 
of light and leading, are few and far between. Yet on your 
ability to see far depends your power to use the facts you get. 
You may, for example, some day run a factory and be con¬ 
cerned with paying wages. You may, if you do not look far, 
even speak of the men you employ as “hands.” There are 
plenty of short-sighted men who call them so. If you look far, 


GET FACTS; LOOK FAR; THINK THROUGH 417 

however, you will see that it would be wiser to think of them as 
minds, or even as souls. For men do not work with hands alone 
but with heart and brain. You can never lead hands; but you 
may, if you have facts and look afar, come to lead men. If you 
look far you will never describe human beings in terms of 
arithmetic, for you will see that the arithmetic is dead and that 
the men are living. You will not, if you look far, think there is 
such a thing as a day’s work, for there is no such thing and will 
be none until all men work alike everywhere. There are as 
many kinds of day’s work, as there are kinds of men, but men 
are infinitely variable. If you look far you will not think that a 
fixed rate of pay produces a fixed result, for you will know that 
men are unlike and that what one can do another cannot, and 
that what a second will do a third will not. You will see that in 
dealing with men you are dealing with character and tempera¬ 
ment and health and heredity and a mass of other things that 
make up the complex being we call “man,” and which sometimes 
in our nearsightedness we describe as a two-dollar man or a 
three-dollar man. 

If you look far you will see beyond a whole mass of current 
phrases and ideas which are the outward and visible expression 
of the average mind but across which he who looks far sees 
clearly a more distant and more fruitful horizon. Nay, the 
very act of looking far will make facts precious to you, for the 
broad vision will bring them to your sight and make you value 
them. 

There are all sorts of phrases which describe nearsight but 
which farsight overrules. Nearsight says, Charity begins at 
home. Farsight adds, But does not end there. Nearsight would 
say, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Farsight 
would say, What kind are in the bush and can I get them? Near¬ 
sight would say, Thus I have been taught. Farsight would say, 
Is this teaching true? Nearsight would have you live in a parish 
and be a parochial business man. Farsight would have you live 
in the world and draw upon the richness of it all for the enlarging 


4i8 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


of your life. It is one of the great phrases of the Old Book, and 
an inspiring one, which says, “ Thou hast taken me and thou hast 
set me in a large place.” 

Having acquired the habit of getting facts and having caught 
the vision of things from afar, make your thinking straight. 
How many men there are in the business world who think in 
circles or at best in curves; whose minds lack the penetrating 
power which goes to the heart of things. If you have gotten 
facts and have the farsight, use the latter on the former to make 
all things mentally clear. If you do not think clearly you can¬ 
not talk clearly. Good salesmanship is not a product of mental 
indigestion. Do you want to be able to state the facts of business 
to men of business? Then you must think through those facts 
so that they are wholly controlled by you, so that they have 
become a part of your mental self, so that you will not stumble 
over your own mental obstructions in the very act of stating 
your case. A business problem will arise before you. First 
get the facts about it and treat them in a broad way, not in a 
narrow way. Do not stick them in a groove in which you like to 
run because it is easy and attempt to push them ahead of you 
in that same old line. Get them all and spread them on your 
mental table; get their bearings and adjust them in their actual 
relations, so that you may know how they lock and interlock. 
In this process you are thinking through those facts, and if you 
continue it to the end you will control the use of those facts. 
Again and again one sees in life men who mean well, who are 
willing to get the truth and willing to use it broadly, who do 
neither effectively because they have not thought the thing 
through. This thorough thinking is one of the finest safeguards 
a man can have against error, because as he sits down with his 
facts and chews the cud upon them over and over again they fall 
into relations, the false separates itself from the truth, the 
trifling from the essential, the strong from the weak, and by a 
process of mental discarding the useless are set aside and true 
values come to light. 


GET FACTS; LOOK FAR; THINK THROUGH 419 

Again and again I have found men in business problems who 
had thought pretty well but not thoroughly upon the thing in 
hand. Many times also I have met men who are masters of the 
thing with which they dealt. Thorough thinking would remove 
many a phantom which, though a ghost, still exerts power upon 
our thought. Thorough thinking will destroy many a false ideal. 
Slavery could not endure thinking through that subject. The 
dueling practice, with its false sense of honor, could not endure 
thorough thinking upon the subject. Many a business and 
political fallacy will die an early death to him who thinks it 
through. Many a teacher, I fear, may be embarrassed to have 
his pupils do thorough thinking, but it will do both the teacher 
and the pupil good to have this so. The process is not one which 
lends itself to smartness. To think through a thing is not always 
a quick process. There are men with minds like light, which 
seem to penetrate into the recesses of a subject. One of slower 
mental habit need not worry. He may in the end go deeper and 
stand on firmer ground. Quick comprehension is the most desir¬ 
able business quality to be sought and valued, but it is not the 
same thing as thorough thinking and it does not take its place. 

Finally, permit me a few words on the ideals of business. The 
business life will, if you treat it fairly, call forth your best. It 
will mean the search for truth. It will mean a broad and human 
philosophy. It will mean keen, incisive thought. All these are 
good. But your business is not to be your life. It is the means 
whereby you live, but your life is something else. To be ab¬ 
sorbed in business so that you live for it is to be intellectually 
and spiritually maimed^. One who does so is not a whole man 
but only part of what might be a complete man. Of course to 
gain has wonderful interest. It is fascinating to pit mind against 
mind, knowledge and acumen and reflection and energy against 
the similar powers in other men. It is a splendid and in the best 
form an ennobling part of life, but it is only a part. There is a 
certain shallow criticism among us, which does not get the facts 
and does not see far and does not think through, which would 


420 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


teach at times that business is sordid and its motto “ An eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Yet this city and others are 
full of the works of men who, after they have won in the business 
arena, have given their ideals play in enriching the towns which 
gave them birth or in which they live. Every such gift is a pro¬ 
test against the shallow cry that business is wholly sordid. Yet 
in saying this I have not given you even a glimpse of all the 
facts about it. There are today factories all over this land, 
thank God, in which men think through the problems of busi¬ 
ness with a far vision of the facts and who have grasped the ideal 
of service to and through those whom they employ and are 
holding up before them and to the world examples of leadership 
that make the business life stand on a level with all that is best 
in statesmanship and art and music and the law and the ministry 
and the other great and beautiful productive professions. 

It is true of course, it is a part of the facts, that there are 
those — many of them — in business who only seek to get and 
who never think to give either of themselves or of that which 
they possess. So there are weak, wicked men in other high pro¬ 
fessions, men that prostitute art and medicine and perhaps 
the pulpit; who separate themselves from the great facts of life 
and with narrow vision think only on the surface of their own 
petty and selfish desires. Still, if the mills of the gods grind 
slowly they grind exceeding small. If we watch the facts of the 
growth of public thought and the increase of broad vision and 
of the habit of thorough thinking we shall see, if we look far 
enough, that these things are doomed; that selfishness is taken 
at its true lack of value; that littleness is known to be a small 
thing; that wealth without vision or ideals is power misplaced, 
and is sternly judged as such. So we may hope that as the love 
of truth and obedience to it shall grow and as with firmer footing 
thereon we look afar and think clearly on what we see, we shall 
see our beloved America advancing to that primacy among the 
nations which awaits the nation which honors the facts, which 
looks afar, and which thinks clearly. 


THE USURPATIONS OF SOCIETY 

By Oscar W. Firkins 

(This is a prize college oration delivered by Oscar W. Firkins, Uni¬ 
versity of Minnesota, 1885. Mr. Firkins later attained international 
reputation as a literary critic. Note the simple diction, profuse 
imagery — pictorial element — and originality of style.) 

Nature has two great modes of existence, the crystalline and 
the organic. Society has two stages which likewise correspond 
to the crystal and the organism. Take up and analyze any 
common stone and you will notice that the individual crystals 
which it contains are each perfect, complete, and beautiful, while 
the stone itself is rough, incomplete, unsymmetrical. Take up 
any organism and you will notice that the cells of which it is 
composed are by themselves worthless and imperfect, their 
beauty, usefulness, and perfection lie in their relation to the 
central whole, which is the only complete, entire, and sym¬ 
metrical thing in the organism. 

Society, in its barbarous state, is the group of crystals; in its 
civilized state it is the agglomeration of cells. Take any un¬ 
cultivated society and you will notice two things, first, the per¬ 
fect development of the individual members, and second, the 
rudeness and incompleteness of the society itself. It advances, 
however, it gains harmony, symmetry, perfection, unity, it be¬ 
comes an organic whole; while the members that compose it 
slowly lose more and more of their individual perfection until 
their whole greatness, power, life, and existence lie in their re¬ 
lation to the complete organism of society. 

This is the state of affairs at the present day; man’s whole 
soul and being lie in his social relation. He has ceased to be an 
integer; he has become a fraction. Our objects are social aims; 

421 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


422 

our ideas are social thoughts; our feelings are social emotions; 
our lives are social existences. Our deepest thoughts are a species 
of private theatricals that we play before an imaginary audi¬ 
ence. For what were we created? To have deep relations with 
God, to hold in our hearts a sacred chamber which should be to 
us a holy of holies, to build up in our lives cathedrals to the 
honor of Deity, to be, in the words of Emerson, “ inlets into the 
deeps of reason.” No; we were made to be little wedges and 
screws, whose only use is to fit into the great machine of society, 
and which apart from that use are merely worthless old iron. 

Man’s nature has become like the water drops in the ocean, 
which by themselves are absolutely transparent and colorless, 
and only when grouped together in large masses form the bright 
and beautiful blue of the sea. 

At the threshold of our lives, society meets us and offers us 
the following agreement: I will feed you, nourish you, support 
you, you shall have clothing, warmth, and shelter; your prop¬ 
erty shall be protected; your life shall be secure; you shall en¬ 
joy certain privileges, and all I ask in return is that you shall 
surrender to me your brain, your thought, your soul. “Think 
my thoughts and you shall eat my bread,” is the silent compact 
to which society pledges every one of us. If nature is the mother 
of man, society is his step mother, and she has an elaborate sys¬ 
tem of education by which she seeks to reverse and neutralize 
that mother’s instruction. You are dull; dullness is dangerous 
to society; therefore you shall be patched and mended, and 
shellacked and varnished, until you have reached the proper 
degree of mediocrity. You are a genius; genius is equally 
dangerous to society; therefore you shall be trimmed and 
pruned, and mutilated, and dwarfed until you, too, are properly 
mediocre. Hence it happens that the nineteenth century is 
fertile beyond all other ages in great nations, great institutions, 
great societies and barren beyond most other ages in great men, 
for the state of society which tends to produce greatness in 
states is directly opposed to that which tends to produce great- 



THE USURPATIONS OF SOCIETY 


423 

ness in individuals. Society is therefore perfectly logical in her 
conduct; she realizes that it is by stunting the individuals that 
the state can perfectly develop, by mutilating the separate 
twigs that the whole tree can be made symmetrical; she under¬ 
stands that as a great man is the highest of all blessings to a 
nation in adversity, so he is the greatest of all dangers to a na¬ 
tion in prosperity; and she guides her conduct by his principle. 

But if society is logical in endeavoring to stunt man, is man 
equally logical in allowing himself to be stunted? If the spirit 
of self-preservation leads the one to enforce this system, should 
not the same spirit lead the other to resist it? I am far from un¬ 
dervaluing the importance of social relations, but those elements 
of man’s nature by which he is related to his fellow man are 
generally the more shallow and superficial parts of his character, 
and therefore when these relations become the sole object of his 
life, it is evident that his superficial qualities are developing at 
the expense of his profounder ones. We must certainly give 
society a prominent place in the formation of man’s character; 
if solitude is the mother of great thoughts, society is the nurse of 
great actions; yet even those actions have their source in quali¬ 
ties which solitude only can develop. The petals and stamens 
of the lily are indeed open to the light, but the roots, through 
which alone the petals form their crown of brightness and the 
stamens uplift their spires of gold, are deep hidden in the dark¬ 
ness under ground. The true glory, the true beauty of man’s life 
is always his relation to God and to himself; his social life is only 
noble as it is the expression and embodiment of these. 

This predominance of the social qualities has rendered life 
extremely superficial. The nineteenth century regards with the 
utmost indifference those great questions and principles which 
were the very life and being of former ages, while it concentrates 
its highest thought and feeling on those external and surface 
qualities which former epochs would have regarded as trifles. 
There have been men to whom life was a holy and an awful 
thing, in whose hearts forevermore, “Michael and his angels 


424 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


fought against the dragon and his angels,” to whom every mo¬ 
ment was the gateway of an Elysium, or the threshold of a Tar¬ 
tarus; who heard in their own souls the awful thunders of Sinai, 
and who felt in their own bosoms the holy calm of an Olivet; 
who knew that the hours are the sculptors of the eternities, that 
every pure thought, every holy feeling, is, in the words of the 
most sublime of poets, 

“The golden key 

That opes the palace of eternity.” 

To them life was an Alpine country; it had its great mountains 
towering skyward, its dark and bottomless abysses, its caverns 
haunted by unknown horrors, its mighty glaciers, and its awful 
precipices; it was a chaos of sublimity and horror, of grandeur 
and desolation. Now, what have we done? We have leveled, 
smoothed, graded this wild and barbarous country, we have torn 
down every mountain, we have filled up every chasm, we have 
reduced it to a perfectly even lawn, an admirably trimmed and 
exquisitely decorated park, infinitely more comfortable and in¬ 
finitely less grand. Life has lost its heights, and its depths; its 
summits and its abysses; all its grandeurs, and all its horrors; 
all its sublimity and all its barbarity. Earth, once a vast cathe¬ 
dral, is now a ball room, where we are doomed to dance away, 
talk away, eat away, sleep away, life. Life, instead of being a 
holy trust from God, a thing of infinite sublimity, and infinite 
sacredness, is now a mere toy, a plaything with which we are to 
amuse ourselves. 

The soul of man has, like gases, the great capacity of expand¬ 
ing itself so that it will fill a universe, or contracting itself so that 
it can be contained in a nutshell. The great crime of the nine¬ 
teenth century is that it offers us the nutshell, and not the uni¬ 
verse. I do not desire to underrate the great qualities of our 
epoch; it is the happiest, the most intellectual, the most moral 
of all ages; it is a proper, decorous and well behaved epoch, to 
characterize it in one word, it is an eminently respectable age; 


THE USURPATIONS OF SOCIETY 


425 


but it is narrow in feeling, it is limited in soul; it has substituted 
a religion of the intellect for the religion of the heart; it has 
exalted man’s lower qualities almost into sublimity, while it has 
degraded his higher ones almost into baseness; it has dwarfed 
man by making his social qualities the sum of his being, and by 
sacrificing each individual soul, to that vast nothing, that in¬ 
finite shadow, that lifeless sum total of all lives, which we call 
humanity. 

I would give all this metaphysical speculation, with its 
Penelope’s web forever unraveling what it has woven before, all 
these achievements of physical science evermore offering to us a 
false mirage of happiness, all these brilliantly fruitless inventions 
and discoveries of ours, for one spark of that intense fire which 
lighted the soul of Wickliffe and burned in the bosom of Luther. 
I would sacrifice all this rainbow tinted art and culture, all this 
flash and sparkle and glow of intellect, all this brilliancy of 
thought and beauty of expression, for one drop of that terrible 
earnestness in the spirit of Milton, one breath of that storm of 
passion raging in John Bunyan’s soul. In view of these facts the 
nineteenth century might well exclaim: 

“ Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more: it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

And signifying nothing.” 

But the doom is not irreversible, the decrees of destiny never 
become law, until they are ratified by our own wills. It rests 
with each one of us to resist, to battle, to conquer these tend¬ 
encies of our age, to make our aim not the fleeting and ephem¬ 
eral gifts of society, but the eternal and limitless grandeur of 
man. 


LINCOLN’S “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH” 


(Speech delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the close of the Re¬ 
publican State Convention, by which Lincoln had been named as their 
candidate for United States Senator, June 16, 1858.) 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Convention: 

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tend¬ 
ing, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We 
are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with 
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to 
slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agi¬ 
tation has not only not ceased but has constantly augmented. 
In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been 
reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot 
stand.” I believe that this government cannot endure per¬ 
manently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to 
be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do 
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing 
or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest 
the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall 
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; 
or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike 
lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. 

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? 

Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now al¬ 
most complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to 
speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred 
Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the ma¬ 
chinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let 
him study the history of the construction, and trace, if he can, 
or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and con¬ 
cert of action among its chief architects, from the beginning. 

426 


LINCOLN’S “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH” 


427 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than 
half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the 
national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later 
commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that con¬ 
gressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to 
slavery, and was the first point gained. 

But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by 
the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point 
already gained and give chance for more. 

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been pro¬ 
vided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of 
“squatter sovereignty” otherwise called “sacred right of self- 
government,” which latter phrase, though expressive of the only 
rightful basis of arty government, was so perverted in this at¬ 
tempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man 
choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to ob¬ 
ject. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill 
itself, in the language which follows: “It being true intent and 
meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or 
State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof 
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions 
in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the 
United States.” Then opened the roar of loose declamation in 
favor of “squatter sovereignty” and “sacred right of self- 
government.” “But,” said opposition members, “let us amend 
the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory 
may exclude slavery.” “Not we,” said the friends of the 
measure; and down they voted the amendment. 

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law 
case involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of 
his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State 
and then into a Territory covered by the congressional prohibi¬ 
tion, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing 
through the United States Circuit Court for the District of 
Missouri, and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


428 

decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro’s name was 
Dred Scott, which name now designates the decision finally 
made in the case. Before the then next presidential election, 
the law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court 
of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until 
after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, 
on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of 
the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a 
Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; 
and the latter answered: “That is a question for the Supreme 
Court.” 

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the 
indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point 
gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular 
majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, per¬ 
haps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The 
outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as 
possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority 
of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not 
announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The presi¬ 
dential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; 
but the incoming President in his inaugural address fervently 
exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, what¬ 
ever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. 

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion 
to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott de¬ 
cision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The 
new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman 
letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to 
express his astonishment that any different view had ever been 
entertained! 

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the 
author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, 
whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any 
just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel 


LINCOLN’S “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH” 429 

the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, 
and he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. 
I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether 
slavery be voted down or voted up to be intended by him other 
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon 
the public mind — the principle for which he declares he has 
suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well 
may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, 
well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of 
his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision 
“squatter sovereignty” squatted out of existence, tumbled down 
like temporary scaffolding, — like the mold at the foundry, 
served through one blast and fell back into loose sand, — helped 
to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late 
joint struggle with the Republicans against the Lecompton con¬ 
stitution involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. 
That struggle was made on a point — the right of a people to 
make their own constitution — upon which the Republicans 
have never differed. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection 
with Senator Douglas’s “care not” policy, constitute the pieces 
of machinery in its present state of advancement. This was 
the third point gained. The working points of that machinery 
are: 

(1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and 
no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, 
in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the 
United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro 
in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the 
United States Constitution which declares that “the citizens of 
each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities 
of citizens of the several states.” 

(2) That, “subject to the Constitution of the United States,” 
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery 
from any United States Territory. This point is made in order 


430 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, 
without danger of losing them as property and thus enhance the 
chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. 

(3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a 
free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States 
courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts 
of any slave State the negro may be forded into by the master. 
This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but, if ac¬ 
quiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people 
at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what 
Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the 
free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with 
any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or any other 
free State. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the 
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold 
public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care 
whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly 
where we are now, and partially, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run 
the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. 
Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than 
they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be 
left “perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” What 
the constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. 
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred 
Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect 
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the 
amendment expressly declaring the right of the people voted 
down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have 
spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the 
court decision held up? Why even a senator’s opinion withheld 
until after the presidential election? Plainly enough now, the 
speaking out then would have damaged the “perfectly free” 
argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the 


LINCOLN’S “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH 


outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the 
delay of the reargument? Why the incoming President’s ad¬ 
vance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look 
like the cautious petting and patting of a spirited horse prepara¬ 
tory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the 
rider a fall. Any why the hasty after-endorsement of the de¬ 
cision by the President and others? 

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations 
are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed 
timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten 
out at different times and places, and by different workmen, — 
Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, — and we 
see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the 
frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly 
fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces 
exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too 
many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single 
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and 
prepared yet to bring such a piece in — in such a case we find it 
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger 
and James all understood one another from the beginning, and 
all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the 
first blow was struck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the 
people of a State, as 1 well as Territory were to be left “perfectly 
free,” “ subject only to the Constitution.” Why mention a State? 
They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about 
States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be 
subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is 
mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are 
the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped 
together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated 
as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by 
Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate 
opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the 


432 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor 
a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States 
Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Con¬ 
stitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. 
Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if 
McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declara¬ 
tion of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude 
slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get 
such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Territory, into the 
Nebraska bill — I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not 
have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the 
other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power 
of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches 
it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the lan¬ 
guage too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact 
language is: “Except in case where the power is restrained by 
the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is 
supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.’ 7 
In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the 
United States Constitution is left an open question, precisely as 
the same question as to the restraint on the power of the Terri¬ 
tories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that to¬ 
gether, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere 
long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision declaring 
that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a 
State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially 
be expected if the doctrine of “ care not whether slavery be voted 
up or down” shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give 
promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike 
lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision 
is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power 
of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. 
We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of 
Missouri are on the verge of making their state free, and we 


LINCOLN’S “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH 


shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has 
made Illinois a slave state. To meet and overthrow the power 
of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would 
prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. 
How can we best do it? 

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, 
and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest 
instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish 
us to infer all from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with 
the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly 
voted with us on a single point upon which he and we have 
never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that 
the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But 
“a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Judge Douglas, if not 
a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. 
How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He doesn’t care 
anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the 
“public heart” to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas 
Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas’s superior talent will be 
needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does 
Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? 
He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how 
can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred 
right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. 
Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them 
where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they 
can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done 
all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of 
a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the 
foreign slave-trade? How can he refuse that trade in that 
“property” shall be “perfectly free,” unless he does it as a pro¬ 
tection to the home production? And as the home producers will 
probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a 
ground of opposition. 

Senator Douglas. holds, we know, that a man may rightfully 


434 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


be wiser today than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully 
change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that rea¬ 
son, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change 
of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely 
base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, 
I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question 
his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. 
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so 
that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, 
I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, 
he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not 
promise ever to be. 

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its 
own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose 
hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. Two years 
ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hun¬ 
dred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of 
resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance 
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, 
we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the 
battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, 
proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter 
now? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, 
belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if 
we stand firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate 
or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to 
come. 


OUTLINE: “ SPRINGFIELD SPEECH” 
Purpose: To get voters to support Republican Party. 


Introduction 

I. Slavery agitation still continues. 

II. It will continue until a crisis shall have been reached and 
passed, in that 

A. We must make a decision as to whether the country 
shall become all slave or all free. 

B. My purpose will be to show that we are headed in the 
first direction. 

Body 

I. Leaders of the Democratic Party are in a conspiracy to 
nationalize slavery, for 

A. We can trace the successive steps in the process, for 

1. In 1854, the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
opened the new national territory to slavery, for 

a. A quotation from the bill makes it plain. 

2. The election of Buchanan was regarded as a popular 
indorsement of this liberal policy toward slavery. 

3. The third point gained was the Dred Scott decision, 
in connection with Judge Douglas’ “care not” policy, 
for 

a. Decision holds that negroes cannot be citizens. 

b. Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can 
exclude slavery from a territory. 

c. It is an open question whether the states can ex¬ 
clude slavery, for 

(1) This is made to depend on a Supreme Court 
decision. 


435 


436 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


B. Many things about this conspiracy now become plain 
when viewed in the light of the progress of events, for 

1. The phrase, “subject only to the Constitution” now 
becomes plain, for 

a. It formed a niche for the Dred Scott decision. 

2. The voting down of the Chase amendment now be¬ 
comes plain, for 

a. Passing it would have defeated the purpose of 
the conspirators. 

3. Several other things also become plain now. 

4. An illustration will drive these points home — (il¬ 
lustration of timbers). 

C. The reference, in the Dred Scott decision, to the right 
of a state to exclude slavery tends to show intention to 
nationalize slavery, for 

1. The right of a state to exclude slavery was not before 
the court. 

2. The language of Judge Nelson suggests that here is 
another niche for a Supreme Court decision declaring 
that states cannot exclude slavery, for 

a. He says, “Except in case where the power is re¬ 
strained by the Constitution of the United States, 
the law of the state is supreme over the subject of 
slavery within its jurisdiction.” 

3. Such a decision would make slavery national. 

II. The best way to overthrow this dynasty is to elect a Re¬ 
publican senator, for 

A. Douglas, the Democratic candidate, is not a fit man for 
that work, for 

1. The fact that he has voted with Republicans on 
points on which the two parties have not differed, is 
of no consequence. 

2. The fact that he is a great man will not help, if his 
principles are wrong. 

3. His principles are wrong, for 




OUTLINE; “SPRINGFIELD SPEECH” 437 

a. He says himself he “does not care” whether 
slavery is voted up or voted down. 

b. If consistent, he would have to favor revival of 
African slave trade. 

4. We cannot depend on Judge Douglas changing his 
views on important principles. 

Conclusion 

I. Our cause must be entrusted to the friends of freedom. 

II. We shall win if we stand together firmly. 


MERCHANTS AND MINISTERS 

By Henry Ward Beecher 

(Speech delivered in New York City, May 8, 1883, at the 115th 
annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New 
York.) 

Mr. President and Gentlemen Merchants: — It may 
seem a little strange that, in one toast, two so very dissimilar 
professions should be associated. I suppose it is partly because 
one preaches and the other practices. (Laughter.) There are 
very many functions that are performed in common. Mer¬ 
chants are usually men forehanded; ministers are generally 
men emptyhanded. (Laughter.) Merchants form important 
pillars in the structure of the Church. Ministers are appointed 
often to go forth to council and associations, and a delegate is 
always sent with them. The object of the delegate is to keep the 
minister sober and to pay his expenses. (Laughter.) They are 
a very useful set of men in the Church. (Laughter.) But there 
are some moral functions that they have in common. It is the 
business of the minister to preach the truth. It is the interest 
of the merchant to practice it. I hold that not even the Church 
itself is more dependent upon fundamental moralities than is 
the whole commercial structure of the world. (Cries of “ That’s 
so!”) 

There are three great elements that are fundamental elements. 
They are the same everywhere — among all people and in every 
business truth, honesty and fidelity. (Applause.) And it is my 
mission tonight to say that, to a very large extent, I fear the 
pulpit has somewhat forgotten to make this the staple of preach¬ 
ing. It has been given too largely, recently, from the force of 
education and philosophical research, to discourse upon what are 

438 


MERCHANTS AND MINISTERS 


439 

considered the “higher” topics — theology — against which I 
bring no charge. (Laughter.) But theology itself, that is not 
based on the profoundest morality, is an empty cloud that sails 
through the summer air, leaving as much drought as it found. I 
believe that there is a theology that pertains to the higher ex¬ 
periences of the human soul. As profoundly as any man, I be¬ 
lieve in that. 

Today I have, been transplanting magnolia trees. I am speak¬ 
ing tonight as the farmer of Westchester County. (Laughter.) 
There is one that stands among the earliest I planted, twenty 
years ago, and now it is a vast ball of white. I suppose five 
hundred thousand magnificent cups are exhaling thanksgiving 
to God after the long winter has passed. Now, no man need tell 
me that the root that nestles in the ground is as handsome or 
smells as sweet as these vases in the air; but I should like to 
know what would become of all these white cups in the air, if the 
connection between the dirt-covered roots and the blossoms 
should be cut tonight. The root is the prime provider, and there 
can be no life and no blossom where there is no root connection. 

Theology and all the rhetoric of preaching is well enough in its 
place, provided there is a clean and clear passage from all 
beauty, and all speculations, and all doctrine, down to funda¬ 
mental common practical moralities without doubt. (Applause.) 

I hold, then, that it is the interest both of the Church and the 
Store to see to it that truth is spoken, and that honesty and 
equity prevail between man and man, nation and nation, people 
and people, and that men should be worthy of trust all over the 
world. (Applause.) 

Speaking the truth is an artificial matter. (Laughter.) Men 
are no more born to speak the truth than they are to fire rifles, 
and, indeed, it is a good deal like that. It is only now and then 
that a man can hit the bull’s-eye, and a great many can’t hit the 
target at all. (Laughter.) Speaking the truth requires that a 
man should know a little about what is truth. It is not an easy 
thing to be a true man. We part with our fancies and call them 


440 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


truth. We part with our interests and call them truth. We 
part with our consciences, more often and call that truth. 
(Laughter.) 

The reason why these are fundamental moralities, and why 
they are so important to the commercial interests of men is this: 
commerce dies the moment, and is sick in the degree in which 
men cannot trust each other. (Applause.) That is the case in 
the smallest community, and it is more marked, the greater the 
magnitude of commercial enterprises. And it is one of the 
evidences that things are not so far gone as some would have us 
suppose, that men are willing to trust each other so largely in 
all parts of the earth. If a man can invest his hundreds of 
thousands of dollars on the ocean or in distant countries, where 
men cannot understand the documents we write, it shows that 
there is trust between man and man, buyers and sellers; and if 
there is trust between them it is because experience has created 
the probabilities of truthfulness in the actions of men and all 
the concordant circumstances. If men did not believe in the 
truth of men, they never would send to China, Japan or Mexico 
their great properties and interests, with no other guarantee 
than that the men are trustworthy. The shipmaster must be 
trustworthy, the officers of the government must be trustworthy, 
and that business goes on and increases the world over is a 
silent testimony that, bad as men do lie, they do not lie bad 
enough to separate man from man. (Laughter.) 

Now, I wish to call your attention to one unpleasant state of 
affairs. It is not to me so very surprising that men intrusted 
with large interests are found to be so breakable. There is 
nothing in the make-up of a president that should cause him to 
make off with the funds committed to his management. There 
is nothing in being a cashier or director that ought to rot out a 
man so that he snaps under temptation. I admit that all men 
are breakable. Men are like timber. Oak will bear a stress that 
pine won’t, but there never was a stick of timber on the earth 
that could not be broken at some pressure. There never was a 


MERCHANTS AND MINISTERS 


441 


man born on the earth that could not be broken at some pressure 
— not always the same nor put in the same place. There is 
many a man who cannot be broken by money pressure, but who 
can be by pressure of flattery. There is many a man impervious 
to flattery who is warped and biased by his social inclinations. 
There is many a .man you cannot tempt with red gold, but you 
can with dinners and convivialities. One way or the other, every 
man is vincible. There is a great deal of meaning in that simple 
portion of the Lord’s prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” 

No man knows what he will do, according to the nature of the 
temptation as adapted to the peculiar weakness of his constitu¬ 
tion. But this is that which is peculiar — that it requires piety 
to be a rascal. (Laughter.) It would almost seem as if a man 
had to serve as a superintendent of a Sunday School as a pass¬ 
port to Sing Sing. (Laughter.) How is it that pious men are 
defrauding their wards? That leading men in the Church are 
running off with one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand 
dollars? In other words, it would seem as if religion were simply 
a cloak for rascality and villainy. It is time for merchants and 
ministers to stand together and take counsel on that subject. 
I say the time has come when we have got to go back to old- 
fashioned, plain talk in our pulpits on the subject of common 
morality, until men shall think not so much about Adam as 
about his posterity (applause,) not so much about the higher 
themes of theology, which are regarded too often as being the 
test of men’s ability and the orthodoxy and salvability of 
churches. 

Well, gentlemen, in regard to what men think in the vast 
realm of theology, where nobody knows anything about it, 
does not make any difference. (Laughter.) A man may speak 
and be lying, and not know it, when he has got up overhead in 
the clouds. But on the ground, where man meets man, where 
interest meets interest, where temptation pursues every man, 
where earthly considerations — greediness, selfishness, pride, all 
influences are working together we need to have every man, 


442 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


once a week at any rate, in the church, and every day at home, 
cautioned on the subject of the simple virtues of truth and 
honesty and fidelity; and a man that is, in these three respects, 
thoroughly educated, and education has trained him so that he 
is invincible to all the other temptations of life, has come not 
necessarily to be a perfect man, because he is ignorant of all 
theology; but I say that, over all the theories of theology, I think 
that education will lead more men to heaven than any high 
Church theology, or any other kind that leaves that out. 
(Applause.) 

What, then, are we going to do? It seems to me there are three 
things that must be done. In the first place, the household must 
do its own work. The things that we learn from our fathers and 
mothers we never forget, by whichever end they enter. (Laugh¬ 
ter.) They become incorporated into our being, and become al¬ 
most instincts, apparently. If we have learned at home to love 
and honor the truth, until we come to hate, as men hate filth, 
all lying, all double-tongued business, — if we get that firmly 
ingrained, we shall probably carry that feeling to the end of life 
— and it is the most precious thread of life — provided we keep 
out of politics. (Laughter.) 

Next, it seems to me that this doctrine of truth, equity and 
fidelity must form a much larger part and a much more instruc¬ 
tive part of the ministrations of the Church than it does today. 
Wonder is a great many times expressed why the churches are 
so thin, why men do not go to meeting. The churches are always 
popular when people hear something there that they want to 
hear — when they receive that which gives them light, and 
food for thought, and incitement in all the legitimate ways of 
life. There they will go again and again. And if churches are 
supported on any other ground, they are illegitimate. The 
Church should feed the hungry soul. When men are hungry 
and get what they need, they go every day to get such food as 
that. (Applause.) 

Next there must be a public sentiment among all honorable 


MERCHANTS AND MINISTERS 


443 

merchants, which shall frown, without fear or favor, upon 
all obliquity, upon everything in commerce, at home or abroad 
that is violative of truth, equity and fidelity. (Applause.) 
These three qualities are indispensable to the prosperity of 
commerce. With them, with the stimulus, enterprise, oppor¬ 
tunities and means that we have in our hands, America can 
carry the world. (Applause.) But without them, without these 
commercial understrata in the commerce of America, we shall 
do just as foolishly as other people have done, and shall come 
to the same disasters in the long run as they have come to. 
(Applause.) 

So, then, gentlemen, this toast, “ Ministers and Merchants,” 
is not so strange a combination after all. You are the merchants 
and I am the minister, and I have preached to you and you have 
sat still and heard the whole of it; and with this simple testi¬ 
mony, and with this foundation laid before you for your future 
prosperity, I have only to say, if you have been accustomed to 
do what the Mosaic law wisely forbids, you must not twine the 
hemp and the wool to make a thread under the Mosaic economy. 

You, merchants, must not twine lies and sagacity with your 
threads in weaving, for every lie that is told in business is a 
rotten thread in the fabric, and though it may look well when it 
first comes out of the loom, there will always be a hole there, first 
or last, when you come to wear it. (Applause.) No gloss in 
dressing, no finishing in bargain or goods, no lie, if it be an or¬ 
ganic lie, no lie that runs through whole trades or whole de¬ 
partments, has any sanity, safety or salvation in it. A lie is bad 
from top to bottom, from beginning to end, and so is cheating — 
except in umbrellas, slate-pencils and such things. (Laughter.) 
There is a little line drawn before you come quite up to the dead 
line of actual transgression. (Laughter.) When a young man 
swears he will teach a whole system of doctrines faithfully, no 
one supposes he means it; but he is excused because everybody 
knows that he does not know what he is saying, and doesn t 
understand. Of course, there is the lying of permission, as 


444 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


when a lawyer says to a jury, in a bad case: “On my soul, gen¬ 
tlemen of the jury, I believe my client to be an injured man.” 
We know he is lying; he knows it, and the jury knows it, and so 
it is not lying at all, really. (Laughter.) And even when 
engineers make one estimate (glancing humorously in the direc¬ 
tion of the gentleman who had eulogized the bridge manage¬ 
ment) — but we pay up another bill. (Prolonged laughter.) 
Leaving out these matters, lies of courtesy, lies of ignorance, 
professional lies, lawyers’ lies, theologians’ lies — and they are 
good men (laughter) — I come to common, vulgar lies, calico 
lies, broadcloth lies, cotton lies, silk lies, and those most vermin¬ 
ous and multitudinous lies of grocers. (Roars of laughter.) 

Gentlemen, I have been requested to say a word or two on 
monopoly. I wish, on my soul, there were a few men who had 
the monopoly of lying, and that they had it all to themselves. 
(Applause.) And now I go back to my first statement. The 
Church and the Store have a common business before them, to 
lay the foundation of sound morality, as a ground of temporal 
prosperity, to say nothing of any other direction. The minister 
and the merchant have a like interest. The minister for the 
sake of God and humanity, and the merchant for his own sake, 
to see to it that, more and more, in public sentiment, even in 
newspapers — which are perhaps as free as any other organs of 
life from bias and mistake (laughter) — lying shall be placed in 
the category of vermin. (Applause.) And so, with my benedic¬ 
tion, gentlemen, I will leave you to meditate on this important 
topic. (Applause.) 


APPENDIX III 


SELECTIONS FOR PRACTICE 

The following selections are submitted for practice. In almost 
every class in speech training there are occasions when selections 
serve a very useful purpose in working for specific ends, whether 
it be to improve voice, learn emphasis, enrich the variety in tonal 
elements, or what not. There are often difficulties experienced 
by individual students that can best be met in that way. The 
selections have been chosen for their adaptation to beginners. 
Many of the poems are narrative poems. Several offer oppor¬ 
tunities for more or less advanced work. 

Abraham Lincoln: Henry Watterson, 484 

Apostrophe to the Ocean: George Gordon Byron, 463 

Bells of Shandon, The: Francis Mahony, 476 

Boys, The: Oliver Wendell Holmes, 474 

Calf Path, The: Sam Walter Foss, 447 

Columbus: Joaquin Miller, 466 

Daffodils, The: William Wordsworth, 471 

Day in June, A: James Russell Lowell, 449 

Death of Copernicus, The: Edward Everett, 453 

Each in His Own Tongue: William Herbert Carruth, 452 

Exile of the Acadians: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 480 

Her Letter: Bret Harte, 455 

House by the Side of the Road, The: Sam Walter Foss, 460 
Indirection: Richard Realf, 458 

Lincoln, the Man of the People: Edwin Markham, 469 

Lisper, The: Anonymous, 462 

Little Boy Blue: Eugene Field, 478 

Man with the Hoe, The: Edwin Markham, 446 

My Love: James Russell Lowell, 464 

Old Clock on the Stairs, The: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 467 

Petrified Fern, The: Mary Lydia Bolles, 459 

Thanatopsis: William Cullen Bryant, 472 

War Dead, The: Anonymous, 451 

Wendell Phillips: James Russell Lowell, 479 

445 


THE MAN WITH THE HOE 


Written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting of a brutalized toiler 
in the deep abyss of labor 

God made man in His own image 

in the image of God He made him. — Genesis 

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 

The emptiness of ages in his face, 

And on his back the burden of the world. 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? 

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave 
To have dominion over sea and land; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; 

To feel the passion of Eternity? 

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? 

Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf 
There is no shape more terrible than this — 

More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed — 
More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 

More packed with danger to the universe. 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim! 

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 

What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 

The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 

446 


THE CALF PATH 


447 


Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop; 

Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 

Plundered, profaned and disinherited, 

Cries protest to the Powers that made the world, 

A protest that is also prophecy. 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 

Is this the handiwork you give to God, 

This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 

How will you ever straighten up this shape; 

Touch it again with immortality; 

Give back the upward looking and the light; 

Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 

Make right the immemorial infamies, 

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 

How will the future reckon with this Man? 

How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? 

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 

With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 

When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world, 
After the silence of the centuries? 

— Edwin Markham 

THE CALF PATH 

One day through the primeval wood 
A calf walked home, as good calves should; 

But made a trail all bent askew, 

A crooked trail, as all calves do. 

Since then, two hundred years have fled, 

And, I infer, the calf is dead. 

But still, he left behind his trail, 

And thereby hangs my moral tale. 


448 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

The trail was taken up next day, 

By a lone dog that passed that way; 

And then a wise bell-wether sheep, 

Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, 

And drew the flock behind him, too, 

As good bell-wethers always do. 

And from that day o’er hill and glade, 
Through those old woods a path was made. 

And many men wound in and out, 

And dodged and turned and bent about, 

And uttered words of righteous wrath 
Because ’twas such a crooked path; 

But still they followed — do not laugh — 
The first migrations of that calf, 

And through this winding wood-way stalked, 
Because he wabbled when he walked. 

This forest path became a lane 

That bent and turned and turned again; 

This crooked lane became a road, 

Where many a poor horse with his load, 
Toiled on beneath the burning sun, 

And traveled some three miles in one; 

And thus a century and a half 
They trod the footsteps of that calf. 

The years passed on in swiftness fleet, 

The road became a village street, 

And this, before men were aware 
A city’s crowded thoroughfare. 

And soon the central street was this 
Of a renowned metropolis, 

And men two centuries and a half 
Trod in the footsteps of that calf. 


449 


A DAY IN JUNE 

Each day a hundred thousand rout 
Followed this zig-zag calf about; 

And o’er his crooked journey went 
The traffic of a continent. 

A hundred thousand men were led 
By one calf near three centuries dead; 

For thus such reverence is lent 
To well-established precedent. 

A moral lesson this might teach 
Were I ordained and called to preach. 

For men are prone to go it blind 
Along the calf paths of the mind; 

And work away from sun to sun 
To do what other men have done. 

They follow in the beaten track, 

And in and out and forth and back, 

And still their devious course pursue, 

To keep the path that others do; 

But how those wise old wood gods laugh 
Who saw that first primeval calf! 

Ah! many things this tale might teach, 

But I am not ordained to preach. 

— Sam Walter Foss 


A DAY IN JUNE 
I 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 


450 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 

II 

The flush of life may well be seen 
Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 

The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 

And there’s never a leaf or a blade too mean, 

To be some happy creature’s palace; 

III 

The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 

And lets his illumined being o’errun 
With the deluge of summer it receives; 

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

IV 

Now is the high tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; 

We are happy now because God wills it; 

No matter how barren the past may have been, 

’Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; 


THE WAR DEAD 


451 


V 

We sit in the warm shade, and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing; 

The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 

That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 

That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 

And if the breeze kept the good news back 
For other couriers we should not lack! 

VI 

We could guess it by yon heifer’s lowing — 

And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 

Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how! 

Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving 

’Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 

As the grass to be green, or the skies to be blue — 

’Tis the natural way of living. 

— James Russell Lowell 

THE WAR DEAD 

“I was a peasant of the Polish plain; 

I left my plow because the message ran: 

Russia, in danger, needed every man 
To save her from the Teuton; and was slain. 

I gave my life for freedom; this I know; 

For those who bade me fight had told me so.” 


452 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


“I was a Tyrolese, a mountaineer; 

I gladly left my mountain home to fight 
Against the brutal, treacherous Muscovite; 
And died in Poland on a Cossack spear. 

I gave my life for freedom; this I know; 

For those who bade me fight had told me so.” 

“I worked in Lyons at my weaver’s loom, 
When suddenly the Prussian despot hurled 
His felon blow at France and at the world; 
Then I went forth to Belgium and my doom. 

I gave my life for freedom; this I know; 

For those who bade me fight had told me so.” 

“I owned a vineyard by the wooded Main, 
Until the Fatherland, begirt by foes 
Lusting her downfall, called me, and I rose 
Swift to the call and died in far Lorraine. 

I gave my life for freedom; this I know; 

For those who bade me fight had told me so.” 

“I worked in a great shipyard by the Clyde; 
There came a sudden word of war declared, 

Of Belgium, peaceful, helpless, unprepared, 
Asking our aid; I joined the ranks, and died. 

I gave my life for freedom; this I know; 

For those who bade me fight had told me so.” 

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 

A fire-mist and a planet, — 

A crystal and a cell, — 

A jellyfish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cave-men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, — 


THE DEATH OF COPERNICUS 


453 


Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 

The infinite, tender sky, 

The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 

And the wild geese sailing high, — 

And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the goldenrod, — 

Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others call it God. 

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach 
When the moon is new and thin, 

Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in, — 

Come from the mystic ocean, 

Whose rim no foot has trod, — 

Some of us call it Longing, 

And others call it God. 

A picket frozen on duty — 

A mother starved for her brood, — 

Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood; 

And millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight, hard pathway plod, — 

Some call it Consecration, 

And others call it God. 

— William Herbert Carruth 

THE DEATH OF COPERNICUS 

i. At length he draws near his end. He is seventy-three years 
of age, and he yields his work on “The Revolutions of the 
Heavenly Orbs” to his friends for publication. The day at last 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


454 

has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the 
24th of May, 1543. 

2. On that day — the effect, no doubt, of the intense excite¬ 
ment of his mind, operating upon an exhausted frame — an 
effusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last 
hour has come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he 
will never rise. 

3. The beams of the setting sun glance through the Gothic 
windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere 
which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; 
his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier 
years, hangs before him; beneath it are his astrolabe and other 
imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are 
gathered his sorrowing disciples. 

4. The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing 
sage is turned to see who enters: it is a friend who brings him the 
first printed copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that 
book he contradicts all that has ever been distinctly taught by 
former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the 
sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world has acknowledged 
for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be 
shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be 
made to press even religion into the service against him; but 
he knows that his book is true. 

5. He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth as his dying 
bequest to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it 
place himself between the window and his bedside, that the 
sun’s rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may be¬ 
hold it once more before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, 
takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires. 

6. But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying 
countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles his eye; 
his lips move; and the friend who leans over him, can hear him 
faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian 
lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed in verse: 


HER LETTER 


455 


“Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light; 
Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night; 
And thou, effulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed, 
My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands 
thy aid. 

Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode, 

The pavement of those heavenly courts where I shall reign 
with God.” 

So died the great Columbus of the heavens. 


HER LETTER 

I’m sitting alone by the fire, 

Dressed just as I came from the dance, 

In a robe even you would admire,— 

It cost a cool thousand in France; 

I’m be-diamonded out of all reason, 

My hair is done up in a cue: 

In short, sir, “the belle of the season” 

Is wasting an hour on you. 

A dozen engagements I’ve broken; 

I left in the midst of a set; 

Likewise a proposal, half spoken, 

That waits — on the stairs — for me yet. 
They say he’ll be rich, — when he grows up, — 
And then he adores me indeed. 

And you, sir, are turning your nose up, 

Three thousand miles off, as you read. 

“And how do I like my position?” 

“And what do I think of New York?” 

“And now, in my higher ambition, 

With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk? ” 



THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

“And isn’t it nice to have riches, 

And diamonds, and silks, and all that? ” 
“And aren’t it a change to the ditches 
And tunnels of Poverty Flat? ” 

Well, yes, — if you saw us out driving 
Each day in the park four-in-hand, — 

If you saw poor, dear mamma contriving 
To look supernaturally grand, — 

If you saw papa’s picture taken 
By Brady, and tinted at that, — 

You’d never suspect he sold bacon 
And flour at Poverty Flat. 

And yet, just this moment, when sitting 
In the glare of the grand chandelier, — 

In the bustle and glitter befitting 
The “finest soiree of the year,” 

In the mists of a gauze de Chambery, 

And the hum of the smallest of talk, — 
Somehow, Joe, I thought of the “Ferry,” 

And the dance that we had on “The Fork” 

Of Harrison’s barn, with its muster 
Of flags festooned over the wall; 

Of the candles that shed their soft luster 
And tallow on head-dress and shawl; 

Of the steps that we took to one fiddle; 

Of the dress of my queer vis-d-vis; 

And how I once went down the middle 
With the man that shot Sandy McGee; 

Of the moon that was quietly sleeping 
On the hill, when the time came to go; 

Of the few baby peaks that were peeping 
From under their bedclothes of snow; 


HER LETTER 


457 


Of that ride, — that to me was the rarest; 

Of — the something you said at the gate, — 

Ah, Joe, then I wasn’t an heiress 
To “the best paying lead in the State.” 

Well, well, it’s all past; yet it’s funny 
To think, as I stood in the glare 
Of fashion, and beauty, and money, 

That I should be thinking, right there, 

Of someone who breasted highwater, 

And swam the North Fork, and all that, 

Just to dance with old Folinsbee’s daughter, 

The Lily of Poverty Flat. 

But goodness! what nonsense I’m writing! 

(Mamma says my taste still is low,) 

Instead of my triumphs reciting, 

I’m spooning on Joseph, — heigh-ho! 

And I’m to be “finished” by travel, — 

Whatever’s the meaning of that, — 

Oh! why did papa strike pay gravel 
In drifting on Poverty Flat. 

Good-night, — here’s the end of my paper; 

Good-night, — if the longitude please, — 

For maybe while wasting my taper, 

Your sun’s climbing over the trees. 

But know if you haven’t got riches, 

And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that, 

That my heart’s somewhere there in the ditches, 

And you’ve struck it, — on Poverty Flat. 

— Bret Harte 


458 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


INDIRECTION 

I 

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion 
is fairer: 

Rare is the rose-burst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is 
rarer; 

Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is 
sweeter; 

And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered 
the metre. 

II 

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing; 

Never a river that flows, but a majesty sceptres the flowing; 

Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did 
infold him, 

Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold 
him. 

III 

Back of the canvas that throbs the painter is hinted and hidden; 

Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden; 

Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling; 

Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the re¬ 
vealing. 

IV 

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is 
greater; 

Vast the created and beheld, but vaster the inward creator; 

Back of the sound brooks the silence, back of the gift stands the 
giving; 

Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of re¬ 
ceiving. 


THE PETRIFIED FERN 


459 


V 

Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing; 
The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the 
wooing; 

And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights 
where those shine, 

Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life 
is divine. 

— Richard Realf 

THE PETRIFIED FERN 

I 

In a valley, centuries ago, 

Grew a little fern-leaf, green and slender, 

Veining delicate, and fibres tender; 

Waving, when the wind crept down so low. 

Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it, 

Playful sunbeams darted in and found it, 

Drops of dew stole in by night and crowned it. 

But no foot of man e’er trod that way; 

Earth was young and keeping holiday. 

II 

Monster fishes swam the silent main, 

Stately forests waved their giant branches, 

Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches, 

Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain; 

Nature reveled in grand mysteries, 

But the little fern was not of these, 

Did not number with the hills and trees; 

Only grew and waved its wild, sweet way, 

None ever came to note it day by day. 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


III 

Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood, 

Heaved rocks, and changed the mighty motion 
Of the deep strong currents of the ocean, 

Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood, 
Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay, 

Covered it and hid it safe away. 

Oh the long, long centuries since that day! 

Oh the agony! Oh life’s bitter cost 
Since that useless little fern was lost! 

IV 

Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man, 
Searching Nature’s secrets, far and deep; 

From a fissure in a rocky steep 
He withdrew a stone, o’er which there ran 
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, 

Veinings, leafage, fibres clear and fine, 

And the fern’s life lay in every line! 

So, I think, God hides some souls away, 

Sweetly to surprise us, the last day. 

— Mary Lydia Bolles 


THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn 
In the peace of their self-content; 

There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, 

In a fellowless firmament; 

There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths 
Where highways never ran — 

But let me live by the side of the road 
And be a friend to man. 


THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 461 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 

Where the race of men go by — 

The men who are good, and the men who are bad, 

As good and as bad as I. 

I would not sit in the scorner’s seat, 

Or hurl the cynic’s ban; 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road 
And be a friend to man. 

I see from my house by the side of the road, 

By the side of the highway of life, 

The men who press with ardor of hope, 

The men who are faint with the strife, 

But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears — 

Both parts of an infinite plan; 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road 
And be a friend to man. 

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead, 

And mountains of wearisome height; 

That the road passes on through the long afternoon, 

And stretches away to the night. 

And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice 
And weep with the strangers that moan, 

Nor live in my house by the side of the road 
Like a man who dwells alone. 

Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 

Where the race of men go by — 

They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, 
Wise, foolish — so am I. 

Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat, 

Or hurl the cynic’s ban? 

Let me live in my house by the side of the road 
And be a friend to man. 


— Sam Walter Foss 


462 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

THE LISPER 

Elsie Mingus lisps , she does! 

She lives wite acrosst from us 
In Miz. Ayers’uz house ’at she 
Rents part to the Mingus’uz. — 

Yes, an’ Elsie plays wiv me. 

Elsie lisps so, she can’t say 
Her own name, ist anyway! — 

She says “ Elthy” — like they wuz 
Feathers on her words, an’ they 
Ist stick on her tongue like fuzz. 

My! she’s purty , though! — An’ when 
She lisps, w’y, she’s purty nenl 
When she telled me, wunst, her doll 
Wuz so “thweet,” an’ I p’ten’ 

/ lisp too, — she laugh’ — ’at’s all! — 

She don’t never git mad none — 

’Cause she know I’m ist in fun. — 

Elsie she ain’t one bit sp’iled. — 

Of all childerns — ever’ one — 

She’s the ladylikest child! — 

My Ma say she is! One time 
Elsie start to say the rhyme 

“Thing a thong o’ thixpenth” — Wh’ee! 
I ist yell! An’ Ma say I’m 
Unpolite as I can be! 

Wunst I went wiv Ma to call 
On Elsie’s Ma, an’ eat an’ all; 

An’ nen Elsie, when we’ve et, 

An’ we’re playin’ in the hall, 

Elsie say: It’s etikett 


463 


APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN 

Fer young gentlemens, like me, 

Eatin’ when they’s company , 

Not to never ever crowd 
Down their food, ner “thip their tea 
Ner thup thoop so awful loud!” 

— Anonymous 


APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 

There is society, where none intrudes, 

By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 

I love not man the less, but Nature more, 

From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 

To mingle with the universe and feel 

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll! 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain, 

Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 
Stops with the shore; — upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own, 

When for a moment, like a drop of rain, 

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 

And monarchs tremble in their capitals; 

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 


464 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war, — 

These are thy toys and, as the snowy flake, 

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. 

— George Gordon Byron 


MY LOVE 

Not as all other women are 
Is she that to my soul is dear; 

Her glorious fancies come from far, 
Beneath the silver evening star, 

And yet her heart is ever near. 

Great feelings hath she of her own, 

Which lesser souls may never know; 

God giveth them to her alone, 

And sweet they are as any tone 
Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 

Yet in herself she dwelleth not, 

Although no home were half so fair; 

No simplest duty is forgot, 

Life hath no dim and lowly spot 
That doth not in her sunshine share. 

She doeth little kindnesses, 

Which most leave undone, or despise; 

For naught that sets one heart at ease, 
And giveth happiness or peace, 

Is low-esteemed in her eyes. 

She hath no scorn of common things, 
And, though she seem of other birth. 


MY LOVE 


46S 


Round us her heart entwines and clings, 

And patiently she folds her wings 
To tread the humble paths of earth. 

Blessing she is — God made her so — 

And deeds of weekday holiness 
Fall from her noiseless as the snow, 

Nor hath she ever chanced to know 
That aught were easier than to bless. 

She is most fair, and thereunto 
Her life doth rightly harmonize; 

Feeling or thought that was not true 
Ne’er made less beautiful the blue 
Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 

She is a woman, one in whom 
The springtime of her childish years 
Hath never lost its fresh perfume, 

Though knowing well that life hath room 
For many blights and many tears. 

I love her with a love as still 
As a broad river’s peaceful might, 

Which, by high tower or lowly mill, 

Goes wandering at its own will, 

And yet doth ever flow aright. 

And, on its full, deep breast serene, 

Like quiet isles my duties lie; 

It flows around them and between, 

And makes them fresh and fair and green, 

Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 

— James Russell Lowell 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


COLUMBUS 

Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the Gates of Hercules; 

Before him not the ghost of shores; 

Before him only shoreless seas. 

The good mate said: “Now must we pray, 

For lo! the very stars are gone. 

Brave AdmYl, speak; what shall I say?” 

“Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!’” 

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 

“This mad sea shows his teeth tonight. 

He curls his lip, he lies in wait, 

With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 

Brave Adm’r’l, say but one good word; 

What shall we do when hope is gone? ” 

The words leapt like a leaping sword: 

“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!” 

“My men grow mutinous day by day; 

My men grow ghastly wan and weak.” 

The stout mate thought of home; a spray 
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 

“What shall I say, brave Adm’r’l, say, 

If we sight naught but seas at dawn? ” 

“Why, you shall say at break of day: 

‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’” 

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 

Until at last the blanched mate said: 

“Why, now not even God would know 
Should I and all my men fall dead. 

These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 


THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 


467 


Now speak, brave Adm’r’l; speak and say—” 

He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!” 

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 
Of all dark nights! And then a speck — 

Alight! Alight! Alight! Alight! 

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! 

It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn. 

He gained a world; he gave that world 
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!” 

— Joaquin Miller 

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 

Across its antique portico 

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw, 

And from its station in the hall 
An ancient timepiece says to all, — 

“Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

Half-way up the stairs it stands, 

And points and beckons with its hands 
From its case of massive oak, 

Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! 

With sorrowful voice to all who pass, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever!” 

By day its voice is low and light; 

But in the silent dead of night, 


468 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

Distinct as a passing footstep’s fall, 

It echoes along the vacant hall, 

Along the ceiling, along the floor, 

And seems to say, at each chamber-door, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
Through days of death and days of birth, 
Through every swift vicissitude 
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
And as if, like God, it all things saw, 

It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

In that mansion used to be 
Free-hearted Hospitality; 

His great fires up the chimney roared; 

The stranger feasted at his board; 

But, like the skeleton at the feast, 

That warning timepiece never ceased, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

There groups of merry children played, 

There youths and maidens dreaming strayed; 
O precious hours! O golden prime! 

And affluence of love and time! 

Even as a miser counts his gold, 

Those hours the ancient timepiece told, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

From that chamber, clothed in white, 

The bride came forth on her wedding night; 


LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 469 

There, in that silent room below, 

The dead lay in his shroud of snow; 

And in the hush that followed the prayer, 

Was heard the old clock on the stair, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — forever! ” 

All are scattered now and fled, 

Some are‘married, some are dead; 

And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 

“Ah! when shall they all meet again?” 

As in the days long since gone by, 

The ancient timepiece makes reply, — 

“Forever — never! 

Never — forever!” 

Never here, forever there, 

Where all parting, pain and care, 

And death and time shall disappear, — 

Forever there, but never here! 

The horologe of eternity 
Sayeth this incessantly, — 

“ Forever — never! 

Never — Forever! ” 

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 


LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 

She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 
To make a man to meet the mortal need. 

She took the tried clay of the common road — 
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth, 


470 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy, 
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears, 

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 

Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face; 

And laid on him a sense of the Mystic Powers, 
Moving — all hushed — behind the mortal veil. 
Here was a man to hold against the world, 

A man to match the mountains and the sea. 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, 
The smack and tang of elemental things: 

The rectitude and patience of the cliff, 

The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves, 

The friendly welcome of the wayside well, 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea, 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn, 

The pity of the snow that hides all scars, 

The secrecy of streams that make their way 
Under the mountain to the rifted rock, 

The tolerance and equity of light 

That gives as freely to the shrinking flower 

As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 

To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn 
That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West, 
He drank the valorous youth of a new world. 

The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, 

The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. 

Up from log cabin to the Capitol, 

One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — 

To send the keen ax to the root of wrong, 

Clearing a free way for the feet of God, 

The eyes of conscience testing every stroke, 

To make his deed the measure of a man. 


THE DAFFODILS 


471 


He built the rail-pile as he built the State, 

Pouring his splendid strength through every blow: 

The grip that swung the ax in Illinois 
Was on the pen that set a people free. 

So came the Captain with the mighty heart; 

And when the judgment thunders split the house, 
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, 

He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again 
The rafters of the Home. He held his place — 

Held the long purpose like a growing tree — 

Held on through blame and faltered not at praise — 
Towering in calm rough-hewn sublimity. 

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, 

Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 

And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 

— Edwin Markham 

THE DAFFODILS 

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, — 

A host of golden daffodils 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the Milky Way, 

They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay; 

Ten thousand saw I, at a glance, 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced, but they 
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; 


47 2 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


A poet could not but be gay 
In such a jocund company; 

I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought. 

For oft, when on my couch I lie, 

In vacant or in pensive mood 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills, 

And dances with the daffodils. 

— William Wordsworth 

THANATOPSIS 

To him who, in the love of Nature, holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language: for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And gentle sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart, 

Go forth under the open sky, and list 
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around — 

Earth and her waters, and the depth of air — 

Comes a still voice, — Yet a few days and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 


THANATOPSIS 


473 


Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; 

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix forever with the elements; 

To be a brother to the insensible rock, 

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 

Yet, not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone, — nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world, — with kings, 

The powerful of the earth, — the wise, the good, 

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 

All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, 

Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 

The venerable woods; rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks, 

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, 
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste, — 

Are but the solemn decorations all 

Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun, 

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 

Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
Of morning, traverse Barca’s desert sands, 

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings, — yet the dead are there! 


474 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep, — the dead reign there alone! 

So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glide away, the sons of men — 

The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 

And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man — 

Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side 
By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

— William Cullen Bryant 

THE BOYS 

Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 

If there has take him out, without making a noise. 

Hang the Almanac’s cheat and the Catalogue’s spite! 

Old Time is a liar! We’re twenty tonight! 


THE BOYS 


475 


We’re twenty! We’re twenty! Who says we are more? 

He’s tipsy — young jackanapes! show him the door! 

“Gray temples at twenty?” — Yes! white if we please; 

Where the snowflakes fall thickest there’s nothing can freeze! 

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake. 

Look close — you will see not a sign of a flake! 

We want some new garlands for those we have shed, 

And these are white roses in place of the red. 

We’ve a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told, 

Of talking (in public) as if we were old; 

That boy we call “Doctor,” and this we call “Judge”; 

It’s a neat little fiction — of course it’s all fudge. 

That fellow’s the “Speaker” — the one on the right; 

“Mr. Mayor,” my young one, how are you tonight? 

That’s our “Member of Congress,” we say when we chaff; 
There’s the “Reverend” What’s-his-name? — don’t make me 
laugh. 

That boy with the grave mathematical look 
Made believe he had written a wonderful book, 

And the Royal Society thought it was true! 

So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! 

There’s a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, 

That could harness a team with a logical chain; 

When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, 

We called him “The Justice,” but now he’s “The Squire.” 

And there’s a nice youngster of excellent pith; 

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; 

But he shouted a song for the brave and the free — 

Just read on his medal, “My country ... of thee.” 


476 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

You hear that boy laughing? You think he’s all fun; 

But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done. 

The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, 

And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! 

Yes, we’re boys — always playing with tongue or with pen; 
And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? 

Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay, 

Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? 

Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 

The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! 

And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, 

Dear Father, take care of Thy children, The Boys! 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes 

THE BELLS OF SHANDON 

With deep affection 
And recollection 
I often think of 
Those Shandon bells, 

Whose sounds so wild would, 

In the days of childhood, 

Fling round my cradle 
Their magic spells. 

On this I ponder 
Where’er I wander 
And thus grow fonder, 

Sweet Cork, of thee, — 

With thy bells of Shandon, 

That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters 
Of the river Lee. 


THE BELLS OF SHANDON 


477 


I’ve heard bells chiming 
Full many a clime in, 

Tolling sublime in 
Cathedral shrine, 

While at a glib rate 
Brass tongues would vibrate; 
But all their music 

Spoke naught like thine. 

For memory, dwelling 
On each proud swelling 
Of thy belfry, knelling 
Its bold notes free, 

Made the bells of Shandon 
Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters 
Of the river Lee. 

I’ve heard bells tolling 
Old Adrian’s Mole in, 

Their thunder rolling 
From the Vatican, — 

And cymbals glorious 
Swinging uproarious 
In the gorgeous turrets 
Of Notre Dame! 

But thy sounds were sweeter 
Than the dome of Peter 
Flings o’er the Tiber, 

Pealing solemnly. 

Oh! the bells of Shandon 
Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters 
Of the river Lee. 


47§ 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

There’s a bell in Moscow; 

While on tower and kiosko 
In St. Sophia 
The Turkman gets, 

And loud in air 
Calls men to prayer, 

From the tapering summit 
Of tall minarets. 

Such empty phantom 
I freely grant them; 

But there’s an anthem 
More dear to me — 

’Tis the bells of Shandon, 

That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters 
Of the river Lee. 

— Francis Mahony 


LITTLE BOY BLUE 

The little toy dog is covered with dust, 

But sturdy and stanch he stands; 

And the little toy soldier is red with rust, 

And his musket moulds in his hands. 

Time was when the little toy dog was new, 

And the soldier was passing fair; 

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue 
Kissed them and put them there. 

“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said, 

“And don’t you make any noise!” 

So, toddling off to his trundle-bed, 

He dreamt of the pretty toys; 


WENDELL PHILLIPS 


479 


And, as he was dreaming, an angel song 
Awakened our Little Boy Blue — 

Oh! the years are many, the years are long, 

But the little toy friends are true! 

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, 

Each in the same old place — 

Awaiting the touch of a little hand, 

The smile of a little face; 

And they wonder, as waiting the long years through 
In the dust of that little chair, 

What has become of our Little Boy Blue, 

Since he kissed them and put them there. 

— Eugene Field 

WENDELL PHILLIPS 

There, with one hand behind his back, 

Stands Phillips, buttoned in a sack, 

Our Attic orator, our Chatham; 

Old fogies, when he lightens at ’em, 

Shrivel like leaves; to him ’tis granted 
Always to say the word that’s wanted, 

So that he seems but speaking clearer 
The tiptoe thought of every hearer; 

Each flash his brooding heart lets fall 
Fires what’s combustible in all, 

And sends the applauses bursting in 
Like an exploded magazine. 

His eloquence no frothy show, 

The gutter’s street-polluted flow, 

No Mississippi’s yellow flood 

Whose shoalness can’t be seen for mud; — 

So simply clear, serenely deep, 

So silent-strong its graceful sweep, 


480 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


None measures its unrippling force 
Who has not striven to stem its course; 

How fare their barques who think to play 
With smooth Niagara’s mane of spray, 

Let Austin’s total shipwreck say. 

— James Russell Lowell 

EXILE OF THE ACADIANS 

I 

Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand-Pre. 

Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of Minas, 

Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at 
anchor. 

Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor 

Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the 
morning. 

II 

Now from the country around, from the farms and the neigh¬ 
boring hamlets, 

Come in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants. 

Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young 
folk 

Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous meadows 

Where no path could be seen but the track of the wheels in the 
greensward, 

Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the 
highway. 

III 

Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. 

Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at 
the house-doors 

Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together. 


EXILE OF THE ACAD IANS 


481 

Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; 
For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, 
All things were held in common, and what one had was another’s. 

IV 

Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, 
Bending with golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. 
There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the notary 
seated; 

The good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. 

Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider-press and the bee¬ 
hives, 

Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and 
of waistcoats. 

Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his 
snow-white \ 

Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the fiddler 
Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the 
embers. ^ 

V 

Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, 

And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. 
Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances 
Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows; 
Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them. 

VI 

So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous 
Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum 
beat. 

Thronged ere long was the church with men. Without, in the 
churchyard, 

Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on 
the head-stones 

Garlands of autumn leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest, 


482 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


VII 

Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly 
among them 

Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor 

Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and case¬ 
ment, — 

Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal 

Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. 

Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the 
altar, 

Holding aloft his hands, with its seals, the royal commission. 

VIII 

“You are convened this day,” he said, “by his Majesty’s orders. 

Clement and kind has he been; but how you have answered 
his kindness, 

Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my 
temper 

Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. 

Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch; 

Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all 
kinds 

Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this 
province 

Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there 

Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! 

Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty’s pleasure! ” 

IX 

As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, 

Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hail¬ 
stones 

Beats down the farmer’s corn in the field and shatters his 
windows, 


EXILE OF THE ACAD IANS 483 

Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the 
house-roofs, 

Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their inclosures; 

So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the 
speaker. 

X 

Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose 

Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, 

And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the doorway. 

Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations 

Rang through the house of prayer; and high o’er the heads of 
the others 

Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil, the black¬ 
smith, 

As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. 

XI 

Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly he 
shouted — 

“Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn 
them allegiance! 

Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our 
harvests!” 

More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a 
soldier 

Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the 
pavement. 

XII 

In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, 

Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician 

Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the 
altar. 

Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence 

All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people: 


4§4 


THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 


XIII 

“ What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized 
you? 

Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught 
you, 

Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! 

Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and priva¬ 
tions? 

Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? 

This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane it 

Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred?” 

XIV 

Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his 
people 

Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded that passionate 
outbreak; 

And they repeated his prayer, and said, “O Father, forgive 
them!” 

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

By Henry Watterson 

I look into the crystal globe that, slowly turning, tells the 
story of his life, and I see a little heart-broken boy, weeping 
by the outstretched form of a dead mother, then bravely, 
nobly trudging a hundred miles to obtain her Christian burial. 
I see this motherless lad growing to manhood amid the scenes 
that seem to lead to nothing but abasement; no teachers; no 
books; no charts, except his untutored mind; no compass, 
except his own undisciplined will; no light, save light from 
Heaven; yet, like the caravel of Columbus, struggling on and 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN 


485 

on through the trough of the sea, always toward the destined 
land, I see the full-grown man, stalwart and brave, an athlete 
in activity of movement and strength of limb, yet vexed by 
weird dreams and visions; of life, of love, of religion, some¬ 
times verging on despair. I see the mind, grown as robust as 
the body, throw off these phantoms of the imagination and give 
itself wholly to the work-a-day uses of the world; the rearing 
of children; the earning of bread; the multiplied duties of life. 
I see the party leader, self-confident in conscious rectitude; 
original, because it was not his nature to follow; potent, be¬ 
cause he was fearless, pursuing his convictions with earnest zeal, 
and urging them upon his fellows with the resources of an 
oratory which was hardly more impressive than it was many- 
sided. I see him, the preferred among his fellows, ascend the 
eminence reserved for him, and him alone of all the statesmen 
of the time, amid the derision of opponents and the distrust of 
supporters, yet unawed and unmoved, because thoroughly 
equipped to meet the emergency. The same being, from first 
to last; the poor child weeping over a dead mother; the great 
chief sobbing amid the cruel horrors of war; flinching not from 
duty, nor changing his life-long ways of dealing with the stern 
realities which pressed upon him and hurried him onward. And 
last scene of all, that ends this strange, eventful history, I see 
him lying dead there in the capitol of the nation, to which he 
had rendered “the last full measure of devotion,” the flag of 
his country around him, the world mourning, and, asking my¬ 
self how could any man have hated that man, I ask you, how 
can any man refuse his homage to his memory? Surely, he 
was one of God’s elect; not in any sense a creature of circum¬ 
stance, or accident. Recurring to the doctrine of inspiration, 
I say again and again, he was inspired of God, and I cannot see 
how any one who believes in that doctrine can regard him as 
anything else. (Applause.) 

From Caesar to Bismarck and Gladstone the world has had 
its statesmen and its soldiers — men who rose to eminence and 


486 THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING 

power step by step, through a series of geometric progression 
as it were, each advancement following in regular order one 
after the other, the whole obedient to well-established and well- 
understood laws of cause and effect. They were not what we 
call “men of destiny.” They were “men of the time.” They 
were men whose careers had a beginning, a middle and an end, 
rounding off lives with histories, full it may be of interesting 
and exciting event, but comprehensive and comprehensible; 
simple, clear, complete. 

The inspired ones are fewer. Whence their emanation, where 
and how they got their power, by what rule they lived, moved 
and had their being, we know not. There is no explication to 
their lives. They rose from shadow and they went in mist. 
We see them, feel them, but we know them not. They came, 
God’s word upon their lips, they did their office, God’s mantle 
about them; and they vanished, God’s holy light between the 
world and them, leaving behind a memory, half mortal and 
half myth. From first to last they were the creations of some 
special Providence, baffling the wit of man to fathom, defeating 
the machinations of the world, the flesh and the devil, until 
their work was done, then passing from the scene as mysteri¬ 
ously as they had come upon it. 

Tried by this standard, where shall we find an example so 
impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whose career might be chanted 
by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of 
the most imperial theme of modern times? 

Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; reared in penury, 
squalor, with no gleam of light or fair surroundings; without 
graces, actual or acquired; without name or fame or official 
training; it was reserved for this strange being, late in life, to 
be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a 
supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. 

The great leaders of his party, the most experienced and 
accomplished public men of the day, were made to stand aside; 
were sent to the rear, whilst this fantastic figure was led by 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN 


487 

unseen hands to the front and given the reins of power. It is 
immaterial whether we were for him, or against him; wholly 
immaterial. That, during four years, carrying with them such 
a weight of responsibility as the world never witnessed before, 
he filled the vast space allotted him in the eyes and actions of 
mankind, is to say that he was inspired of God, for nowhere 
else could he have acquired the wisdom and the virtue. 

Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart 
get his music? Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish 
plowman, and stayed the life of the German priest? God, God, 
and God alone; and as surely as these were raised up by God, 
inspired by God, was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years 
hence, no drama, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled with 
greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling 
than that which tells the story of his life and death. (Loud 
applause.) 


APPENDIX IV 


COMPILATIONS OF SPEECHES 

Henry Ward Beecher: I. Lectures and Orations , edited by Newell 
Dwight Hillis. New York: Fleming H. 
Revell Company, 1913. 

II. Yale Lectures on Preaching. Chicago: The 
Pilgrim Press, First, Second, and Third 
Series. 

III. A Treasury of Illustration. New York: 
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1904. 

IV. Patriotic Addresses. Chicago: The Pil¬ 
grim Press, 1887. 

William Jennings Bryan: Speeches. 2 vols. New York: Funk and 
Wagnalls, 1909. 

Henry W. Grady: Orations and Speeches. New York: Hinds, Noble 
and Eldridge, 1910. 

Robert G. Ingersoll: Complete Works (Dresden Edition). 13 vols. 

New York: C. P. Farrell Publishing Company, 1912. 

Homer Dorr Lindgren: Modern Speeches (Revised Edition). New 
York: F. S. Crofts and Company, 1930. 

Modern Eloquence: I. First Edition. 15 vols. Philadelphia: John D. 
Morris and Company, 1900. 

II. Second Edition. 12 vols. New York: Mod¬ 
ern Eloquence Corporation, 1923. 

III. Third Edition. 15 vols. New York: Modern 
Eloquence Corporation, revised in 1929. 

John G. Nicolay and John Hay: Lincoln. New York: Francis D. 
Tandy Company, 1905. 

James Milton O’Neill: I. Modern Short Speeches. New York: The 
Century Company, 1923. 

II. Models of Speech Composition. New York: 
The Century Company, 1921. 

James Miltpn O’Neill and Floyd K. Riley: Contemporary Speeches. 

New York: The Century Company, 1930. 

Wendell Phillips: Speeches. 2 vols. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1891. 
Charles Sumner: Works. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870. 

488 


INDEX 


Acquisitive motive, 124 
Action, bodily, 327-343; lack of, 
common fault in speaking, 329 
Aesthetic sentiments, as motives, 
130 

Aim in speaking, taking, 192 
Alliteration, as a quality of style, 179 
Ambition, as a motive, 123 
Analogy, as a form of illustration, 
100; as a form of logical argu¬ 
ment, 274 

Anecdote, as a form of illustration, 
102 

Argumentative speech, 209; diffi¬ 
culties involved, 259; distinction 
between impressive and argu¬ 
mentative speeches, 261; example 
of, Appendix II; forms of support 
for, 267; informative process in, 
263; nature of, 210; preparation 
of, 259-291; subjects for, 210 
Aspirate voice, 352 

Bain, Alexander, on suggestion, 137 
Barton, Bruce, 148 
Beck, James, 149 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 9, 57, 72, 96, 
98, 104, 108, 113, 126, 166, 168, 
318, 364 

Beveridge, Albert J., 100 
Bose, Sir J. C., 17 
Bowers, Claude, 172 
Bradford, Gamaliel, 4 
Breathing, correct, 345 
Bright, John, 63 


Bryan, William Jennings, 14, 50 
Burns, Robert, 341 

Cards, use of, for recording materials, 
35-36 

Carlyle, Thomas, 1, 90 
Catt, Carrie Chapman, 4, 83 
Central idea, 50 
Challenge technique, 321 
Charts and maps, use of, 223 
Cicero, on diction, 165 
Clash of opinion in argumentative 
speeches, 266 

Clearness, as an objective in speak¬ 
ing, 219 

Communicative attitude, 9 
Concrete, attention value of the, 319 
Contrast, as a quality of style, 171 
Conversational mode, 10 
Conwell, Russell H., 85, 143, 379- 
412 

Criticism of speeches, suggestion for, 

369 

Crowd, the psychological, 154 
Cumulation, as a form of support, 90 
Current magazines, as sources of 
materials, 33 

Delivery of speech, 56-78; criticism 
of, 370 

Diction in speaking, 163; of Ameri¬ 
can orators, 165 

Direct quotation, advantages of, 
183-184 

Douglas, Stephen A., 72 


490 


INDEX 


Dread of public censure, as a motive, 
127 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 25 
Emotional adjustment, 17 
Emotional appeal, always want ap¬ 
peal, 234; value of, 234 
Enunciation, 360; distinctness of, 
361 

Everett, Edward, 98 
Exceptions, as tests of a rule, 270 
Expositions, nature of, 220 
Extempore method, 58; use of, by 
great speakers, 66 

Fable, as a form of illustration, 104 
Fact, as a form of support, 81 
Figures, as a form of support, 81 
Firkins, Oscar W., 100, 173, 421-425 
Forms of support, 78-95; cumula¬ 
tion, 90; facts, figures, statistics, 
81; general example, 83; hypo¬ 
thetical case, 89; literary quota¬ 
tion, 87; reasoning from facts and 
authorities, 88; restatement, 82; 
specific example, 84; testimony, 
86 

Foss, Sam Walter, 139 
Frank, Glenn, 212, 309 
Fulkerson, Roy, 103 

General ends in speaking, 192 
General example, as a form of sup¬ 
port, 83 

George, David Lloyd, 103, 184 
Gestures, 332; clenched fist, 335; 
guiding principles, 333~334; hand 
prone, 335; hand supine, 334; 
hand with index finger prominent, 
335; importance of practice, 336; 
symmetry of, 333 
Grady, Henry W., 91 
Guttural voice, 352 


Haddock, Frank C., 16 
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 180 
Hillis, Newell Dwight, 106 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 109, 150, 
164 

Humor, anecdote as a source of, 102; 
as a means of getting audience re¬ 
sponse, 155; attention value of, 
316; important element in good 
speaking, 317 

Hypothetical case, as a form of sup¬ 
port, 89 

Illustrations, 96-117; as aids to 
memory, no; as means of econo¬ 
mizing attention, iio-m; as 
source of pictorial element in 
speaking, 106-107; in speeches 
of Wendell Phillips, 107; kinds of, 
97; sources of, 109; use of, with 
mixed audiences, 112-113 
Impressive speech, emotional appeal 
in, 241-250; examples of, Ap¬ 
pendix II; forms of support for, 
250; nature of, 205; preparation 
of, 231-258; subjects for, 208 
Informative speech, examples of, 
Appendix II; forms of support 
for, 228; nature of, 204; prepara¬ 
tion of, 218-230; requisites of, 
224; subjects for, 205 
Ingersoll, Robert Green, 91, 92, 93, 
100, 105, 131, 170, 178 
Interestingness, in a speech, 311 
Interpretation of selections, sugges¬ 
tions for, 360 

James, William, 201, 236, 265 

Kinds of speeches, 191-217; enter¬ 
tainment, 193; informative, 193; 
speeches dealing with accepted be¬ 
liefs, 195; speeches dealing with 


INDEX 


491 


unaccepted beliefs, 196-199; the 
two types of persuasive speeches 
distinguished, 203 
King, Thomas Starr, 314, 317 
Knower, Franklin H., 143 

La Follette, Robert, 144 
Lenroot, Irvine, 313 
Lincoln, Abraham, 3, 8, 52, 67, 72, 
88, 98, 145, 158, 182, 341-343, 
426-434 

Lippmann, Walter, 125 
Literary quotation, as a form of sup¬ 
port, 87 

Livermore, Mary, 101 
Logical argument, 268 
Love of family, home, and friends, 
as a motive, 122 
Lowell, James Russell, 354 

Main divisions of a speech, 42 
Mannerisms on the floor, 338 
Manuscript, reading from, 72 
Mechanical approach to expression 
to be avoided, 359 
Memorizing and the extempore 
method, 64 

Memory, auditory, muscular, visual 
forms of, 65 

Mental content important, 358 
Metaphor, as a form of illustration, 
98 

Mill, John Stuart, 6 
Moral sentiments, as motives, 128 
Motivation, 118-136 
Motives, acquisitive, 124; aesthetic 
sentiments as, 130; classification 
of, 119; moral sentiments as, 128; 
negative, 132 

Movement on the floor, 336 

Nasal twang, 348 
Naturalness, 13 


Negative motives, 132 
Nervousness, 14-16 
Notebooks, use of, 35 

Observation, as source of speech 
materials, 34 
O’Connell, Daniel, 357 
Organization, speech, 39-55 
Originality, 173 
Orotund voice, 351 
Outline, 44-45; kinds of, 45; of 
Lincoln’s “Springfield Speech,” 
435; relation to speech, 52 
Outline, logical, for persuasive 
speech, 47; example of, 48 
Outline, topical, for informative 
speech, 45 

Parable, 105 

Parker, DeWitt Henry, 118, 119 
Pectoral voice, 352 
Personal experiences, value of, 27 
Personality, a free, 327 
Persuasion, problems of, 202 
Pharynx, as resonator, 348 
Phelps, William Lyon, 221 
Phillips, Arthur Edward, 42, 80, 90 
Phillips, Charles, 123 
Phillips, Wendell, 13, 14, 50, 67, 70, 
72, 89, 104, 107, 171, 175, 176, 
177, 186-189 

Pictorial element, in speaking, 106 
Picture words, 168 
Posture, 330 

Pronunciation, dictionary as guide, 
363; limitations of correcting, 363; 
list of words often mispronounced, 
364; problems of, 362; sectional 
differences, 362 
Propositions in a speech, 44 
Purpose, importance of a definite, 
42 

7387 440 


492 


INDEX 


Radio talks and showmanship, 214 
Reasoning from facts and authori¬ 
ties, 88. See also Logical argu¬ 
ment 

Regard for reputation, as a motive, 
128 

Repetition, as source of suggestion, 

152 

Restatement, as a form of support, 
82; in summaries, 83 
Rhetorical question, 182 
Rhythm, as an attribute of style, 176 
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 122, 133, 
221, 323 
Root, Elihu, 82 
Ruskin, John, 1 

Sarcey, M., 62 
Scott, Walter Dill, 140 
Self-preservation, as a motive, 120 
Sentence structure, 169 
Shakespeare, Marc Antony’s Ad¬ 
dress, 138 
Shiel, Richard, 177 
Sidis, Boris, 140 
Simile, 97 
Slogans, 153 

Specific example, as a form of sup¬ 
port, 84 

Speech materials, finding and re¬ 
cording, 31-38; nature of good 
materials, 79; sources of, 31-34 
Speeches, classification of, 204 
Spencer, Herbert, 162 
Stereotypes, 156 
Story, Joseph, 129 
Style, speaking, 162-190 
Subject, choosing a, 20-29; requi¬ 
sites of, 21 


Suggestion, 137-161; characteris¬ 
tics of, 140; illustrations and sug¬ 
gestion, 145; man’s susceptibility 
to, 139; meaning of, 140; methods 
of, 142; through transference of 
feeling, 142 

Tact and technique in want appeal, 
133 

Testimony, as a form of support, 85 
Throat, open and relaxed, 346 

Unusual, attention value of the, 312 

Vincent, John Heyl, on diction, 167 
Vital, attention value of the, 311 
Vocal drill, 350 

Vocal elements, 350; force, 353; 

pitch, 357; time, 355 
Vocal quality and emotion, 350 
Vocalizing the breath, 347 
Voice, 344; aspirate, 352; guttural, 
352; orotund, 352; pectoral, 352; 
requisites of a good voice, 344 

Walking and speech preparation, 61 
Want appeal, 118-136; meaning of, 
118 

Wants and wishes, relation of emo¬ 
tions to, 233 
Ward, Cornelia C., 15 
Washington, Booker T., 182 
Webster, Daniel, 4, 5, 66, 75-77, 
121, 356 

West, Robert, 16 
Woodworth, Robert S., 315 
Woolbert, Charles H., 15, 28 
Writing out speeches, 63 

Young, Owen D., 170 
































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